Federal prosecutors alleged that Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández helped move cocaine into the U.S., during the trial of an alleged Honduran drug trafficker in New York on Tuesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said Hernández told accused cocaine trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” in an exchange sometime in 2013 or 2014, the Associated Press reported. Ramírez is the trafficker currently on trial, while Hernández does not face charges.
A witness to the exchange, an accountant referred to by prosecutors as José Sánchez, described the meeting to prosecutors and will testify later in the trial. Sánchez ran a rice business allegedly used by Ramírez to launder drug money. Ramírez allegedly paid Hernández a $25,000 bribe to move drugs through Honduras.
Hernández has vehemently denied working with drug traffickers. However, documents filed by U.S. prosecutors in January contend that Hernández has received bribes from drug traffickers and used the Honduran army to protect a cocaine laboratory as well as shipments destined for the U.S.
Juan Antonio Hernández, the president’s brother, was convicted in 2019 of helping to “process, receive, transport, and distribute multi-ton loads of cocaine that arrived in Honduras via planes, helicopters, and go-fast vessels,” according to the U.S. Justice Department.
The new allegations against Hernández come several months after the Justice Department arrested Mexico’s former defense minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos, accusing him of protecting the H-2 drug cartel while conducting military operations against its rivals. However, the Justice Department dropped charges against Cienfuegos in November, in order to allow Mexican authorities to pursue the case.
Mexico’s attorney general’s office announced in January 2021 that the country would not pursue any charges against Cienfuegos.