Honduras' President Juan Orlando Hernandez is accused of helping to smuggle cocaine
Credit: Jorge Cabrera/Reuters
The Honduran president participated in a cocaine smuggling plot planning to shove the drug "up the noses of the gringos", a New York court was told on Tuesday.
Prosecutor Jacob Gutwillig alleged Juan Orlando Hernandez was paid $25,000 in cash by the defendant Geovanny Fuentes at meetings held in 2013 and 2014.
The president, Mr Gutwillig said, "made the defendant bullet-proof."
Opening the case, Mr Gutwillig, described Honduras as a "narco-state", with Fuentes exploiting his political connections to run a massive cocaine smuggling business.
According to court records, president Hernandez told Fuentes not to worry about extradition to the US.
He promised to use Hondura’s law-enforcement agencies to help smugglers flood the US with cocaine.
"They would — as the president put it — ‘shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,’" Mr Gutwillig continued.
Soldiers belonging to the Xatruch Joint Task Force in a plantation of coca leaf bushes,
Credit: AFP
Mr Hernandez, who has been in power since January 2014, has not been charged.
He has denied the allegations, tweeting on Monday that witnesses in the case were planning to give "false testimony" against him.
Honduras remains a key Washington ally in the region with the two countries sharing intelligence aimed at curbing the drug cartels and the Biden administration is planning to invest $4 billion to tackle violence and corruption in Central America in the hope of stemming the tide of immigration into the US.
Even ahead of the Fuentes trial, the situation had been complicated by the drug trafficking conviction of the Honduran president’s brother, Tony, in New York in 2019.
He faces a potential life jail term when he is sentenced later this month.
Prosecutors allege Tony Hernandez acted as a middle man between Fuentes and the Honduran president.
Fuentes has pleaded not guilty.
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