Los Cachiros testify to bribes paid to Tony Hernandez

Devis Rivera Maradiaga testified in Federal Court in New York today that he met with Antonio "Tony" Hernandez, brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, and was promised that he would get government contracts for one of his cartel's companies if he paid Tony Hernandez a bribe.  Today's testimony came during Fabio Lobo's sentencing hearing.

Rivera Maradiaga in the testimony today testified that Tony said he would use the government contracts to help alleviate the debt the administration owned los Cachiros in exchange for a bribe.  Apparently Rivera Maradiaga recorded his conversation with Hernandez, and turned that tape over to the DEA.  He didn't state when the conversation took place.  However, because he recorded it, we know it took place sometime between December, 2013 and 2015 when Rivera Maradiaga was acting as an informant for the DEA.  Rivera Maradiaga said:

"Tony Hernandez was going to help us by paying some money to INRIMAR which the government of Honduras owed."

INRIMAR was the company that los Cachiros formed at the urging of Porfirio Lobo Sosa to receive government money from contracts for construction.  Porfirio Lobo Sosa was president of Honduras until January 27, 2014 when he was succeeded by Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Tony Hernandez has been implicated in numerous previous investigations into the drug trade.  He featured prominently in testimony Ramon Sabillon, a former police commissioner, swore was part of a conversation he had with a member of the Valle Valle cartel.  In that conversation, he was referred to as "The Brother of The Man".  He tied Tony Hernandez to the AA Cartel, run by the Ardon brothers in El Paraiso, Copan, Honduras.  The AA cartel collected money given to the Presidential campaign of Juan Orlando Hernandez from their drug trafficking.

Tony Hernandez personally defended two Colombians caught in a raid at a grow operation in the Department of Lempira.  Somehow the two prosecutor's who investigated the case were re-assigned to another part of the country just before the trial, leaving an unprepared prosecutor to pursue the case.  The judge then gave the Colombian's a preliminary dismissal of the charges and ordered them released from jail.  They then fled the country.  A later investigation of the case showed that a $150,000 bribe had been paid to the judge to release the Colombians.

Tony Hernandez was also linked with the drug trade by Captain Santos Orellana.  At the time Santos Orellana was named as a person of interest by the US Embassy.  He voluntarily came in to talk to the DEA, and later said on Honduran television that they interviewed him about a plot to kill the US Ambassador to Honduras, James Nealon.  They asked him if he could tie Tony Hernandez to the case.  They also questioned him about a helicopter found in Brus Laguna that had been used to transport cocaine.  He reported that he was told it had been used both by the then Defense Minister, Samuel Reyes, and Tony Hernandez.

Ambassador Nealon doesn't get "democracy"

US Ambassador James Nealon seems to have forgotten that in a democracy, even a weak one like Honduras, you have to actually charge someone with a crime to detain them for long periods of time.  Today Nealon tweeted the word "Lamentable" with a link to a newspaper story announcing the release of Captain Santos Rodriguez Orellana from detention by the Honduran military.

The US Embassy named Captain Rodriguez Orellana along with six others in a press release, as persons the US was investigating for their links to corruption and narco-trafficking on October 7.  At that time the Honduran Military suspended him from his duties providing security to the Joint Command in Comayaguela and confined him to quarters.

They did not silence him however, and on Monday, October 10th he began talking with the press, calling in to the TV Program Frente a Frente and programs on Radio Globo to talk about why he was detained.  He said he went to the Embassy on Sunday, October 9 for questioning by 3 DEA agents.  At that time they asked him about his knowledge of a plot to kill the US Ambassador by bombing his house, and if he could tie President Hernandez's brother, Tony Hernandez to that plot.  Rodriguez Orellana told the Honduran press that he told the DEA he knew nothing about a plot against Ambassador Nealon, nor could he tie Tony Hernandez to such a plot.  He did allow that while he was part of the Honduran Army's security force engaged in drug interdiction in 2014 they confiscated a helicopter in Brus Laguna that tested positive for having transported cocaine, and that an informant told him the helicopter belonged to Defense Minister Samuel Reyes and Tony Hernandez.  That helicopter bore a valid Guatemalan registration with a fake US registration number decal covering it.

This is not the first time that the Honduran President's brother, Tony Hernandez, has been linked to narco-trafficking. We covered such a link in April this year.

Jenifer Lizeth Bonilla, the wife of Captain Rodriguez Orellana, told Criterio, a Honduran weekly publication, that the DEA asked her husband to connect Tony Hernandez to a helicopter captured in August, 2014 by the Honduran military.  It tested positive for drugs.  She said her husband knows nothing about it and has asked the Honduran Ombudsperson for protection.  She said:

"These problems for Captain Rodriguez Orellano come from the time he captured the helicopter, that according to sources, this helicopter was that of Samuel Reyes and Tony Hernandez"

Defense Minister Samuel Reyes challenged her to present her proof to Honduran authorities. Bonilla showed a Whatsapp conversation Rodriguez Orellana had with DEA agent Matthews in which Rodriguez Orellana said that the helicopter was one used by both Samuel Reyes and Tony Hernandez.  Rodriguez Orellana phoned in to Radio Globo and said that the day after they captured the helicopter, someone broke into his house and ransacked it.

Captain Santos Rodriguez Orellana returned to duty today after the military found it had no reason to keep him confined to quarters.  There were no formal charges brought against him.

The Curious Case of General Leandro Osorio

Is the Honduran Police Cleanup Commission suspending the wrong people?  Today it announced it would suspend two of the current police Generals:  Jose Ricardo Ramirez del Cid and Ramon Sabillón Pineda,  Ramirez del Cid stands accused of having been one of the conspirators in the murder of drug czar Aristides Gonzalez.  Ramon Sabillón stands accused of covering police participation in that crime up.

The Commission announced it had reviewed, and would continue to employ Generals Felix Villanueva, Quintin Antonio Juarez, and Hector Ivan Mejia.

The Commission also announced the (forced) retirement of Generals Elder Madrid Guerra, Javer Leopoldo Flores and Jose Leandro Osorio.  These three, it said in its press release, were simply no longer needed since their positions were being eliminated in the restructuring of the National Police.

Leandro Osorio has no accusations against him.  In Osorio's case they're forcing him into retirement after 32 years of service claiming they have no place for him in the new proposed structure of the National Police.  Osorio told the press in Honduras that he has felt "professionally pursecuted" ever since he arrested the Colombian Reuben Dario Pinella in La Iguala in July of 2013 (see our previous post for more details).  General Ramon Sabillón also referred to that case in statements to the public, saying that one of the Valle Valle family told him that President Hernandez's brother, Jose Antonio Hernandez Alvarado, was the link between Alexander Ardon and his El Paraiso, Copan based transportista drug cartel, and their funding of the National Party election campaign in 2013.  Tony Hernandez's law office defended the Colombian, who was released by the judge in the case at the first hearing, and a later investigation showed that some $150,000 in bribes had been paid out to cause that release.

In January of this year, Osorio was stripped of his command of the police on the north coast of Honduras and reassigned to a diplomatic posting outside of Honduras.  Osorio told the Honduran press:

"I was notified of the change because the criminal structures didn't want me here, structures that have been strengthening that don't want me there."

On April 14 of this year, when it appeared as if all of the 32 officers commanding the National Police would be forced into retirement, Osorio told El Tiempo :

"There is no institution of the State that is vaccinated against corruption in Honduras; we all need to be cleaned up....those that are connected will stay, those that aren't will leave the National Police, that is to say those that don't have godfathers will leave."

Clearly Osorio wasn't connected as he's now out of a job.

The Brother of The Man

We've written about this before, but the story has today come back to life with new details, new accusations.  Ramon Sabilllon Pineda, who as head of the National Police helped dismantle the Valle Valle Cartel in Honduras, says that at least one of the Valle Valle family members told him that there were 15 currently serving politicians whose campaigns were funded by the drug traffickers in Honduras.  Sabillón indicated both the Liberal and National Parties political campaigns were funded by the narco-cartels.  Sabillón stated that the National Party contact for drug funding was Juan Antonio "Tony" Hernandez Alvarado, a.k.a. "el hermano de El Hombre", the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado.  Sabillón also ties Tony Hernandez to the ex-mayor of El Paraiso Alexander Ardon, a competitor with the Valle Valle family for control of the drug trade in western Honduras.

Sabillon provided the following transcript to Globo TV during an on-camera interview two days ago:

Drug Trafficker:  This arrest, its it because of politics?
Sabillón: What are you referring to?  The arrest warrant was carried out quickly. 
Drug Trafficker: Yes, General, I finance the Liberal Party and I'm pursued because I'm a Liberal. 
Sabillón: Finance what?  Finance political campaigns?  give t-shirts?  What do you finance?
Drug Trafficker: Yes, political campaigns, General.  But why do you not do anything with the Cartel of the National Party, or the Cartel of the Conservatives (cachurecos)? 
Sabillón: Tell me a name.
Drug Trafficker: The Mayor of El Paraiso, Copan, Chagel Ardon and the brother who works with him.
Sabillón: Whose brother?
Drug Trafficker: The brother of The Man
Sabillón: Which man?
Drug Trafficker: You already know the Man I'm talking about.

We know now, two days later, that the "Drug Trafficker" was one of the Valle Valle family, captured by Sabillon's police and later extradited to the US.  We also know now that the drug cartels are financing the political campaigns of both the Liberal and National parties in Honduras.  All of the Honduran cartel's closed down in the last two years were those that were financing the Liberal party:  the Valle Valle, Chepe Handal, and the Rivera Maradiaga cartels.

The "brother of The Man", Tony Hernandez, was elected to Congress in the same year his brother was elected President, the election of 2013.  Tony is a lawyer, and as such defended two Colombians who were caught, twice, growing opium poppies, marijuana, and with a lab for processing cocaine and heroin in La Iguala, Lempira, in 2013, during the election campaign.  The Colombians, Reuben Dario Pinilla and Freddy Roland Jiménez, were captured for the second time on July 25, 2013 in La Iguala.  They had entered Honduras illegally, and had false identification papers.  They were both captured on the property that housed a drug lab, and had four greenhouses with opium poppy seedlings growing in them.  Fields with opium poppies and marijuana plants were found on the property as well.  With the law office of Tony Hernandez representing them, the Colombians were released by the judge hearing the case at the initial hearing, before any evidence had been heard.  After they were released, the Colombians fled the country.  A later investigation which went no where, none-the-less found that several people, including the judge, had split about $150,000 in bribes. 

In addition to his legal office, Tony Hernandez is a National Party member, a Congress person for the Department of Lempira, elected in 2013.  He serves as the head of the Congressional Commission on Development and Social Protections.  Along with his sister Hilda Hernandez , he owns the Hotel Posada de Don Juan in Gracias, Lempira.  Hilda Hernandez is the Minister of Communications for her other brother, the President, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Alexander Ardon  and his brother Alfredo are the leaders of the "AA Brothers Cartel", as Honduran Intelligence named it.  They were rivals of the Valle Valle cartel, and controlled the drug trade in much of the Departments of Copan and Ocotepeque for the Sinaloa Cartel.  Alfredo was well connected in the National Party.  He helped run the party's campaign in 2013 in Western Honduras, and after the election was re-appointed to the commission that allocates funding to road building ("Fondo Vial") before disappearing in 2014.  His brother Alexander also disappeared in 2014, just before the raids on the Valle Valle family.  In 2015 there were rumors that the AA brothers had negotiated with the DEA to turn themselves in, but the rumors turned out to be false.

The allegation that Tony Hernandez is the National Party's connection to drug money for financing campaigns is not new.  Its been discussed in some of the Honduran press since the Colombian's captured in-flagrante were released without a real hearing.  Sabillón is the first high government official to give voice to the claim, for which he is now suspended from the police.

News Flash: Honduran Police in the Pocket of Drug Dealers

A reporter for Channel 5 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras reportedly tweeted a picture yesterday of sworn testimony given by a suspended judge that he says links the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernández to a Colombian arrested in a marijuana growing operation and high tech drug lab in the department of Lempira. 

We don't agree with the inferences being drawn. There clearly is a pervasive penetration of drug money throughout Honduran society, but the standards for guilt in Honduras too often rest on rumor and innuendo.

On January 30, the Honduran police and military shut down a drug operation in La Iguala, Lempira that consisted of a very large suite of greenhouses being used for growing marijuana and opium poppies.  It also contained what was described as a high tech drug lab. 

During the raid, police arrested a Colombian citizen, Rubén Dario Pinilla. 

This was not the first time Rubén Dario Pinilla had been arrested in Honduras on drug related charges.  On the 25th of July of last year, he was arrested in the same town along with another Colombian, Fredy Hernán Roldán Jiménez.  They were found to be growing 73 pot plants, with 2440 seedlings alleged to be pot plants growing in the same greenhouses on the same property. 

That case came before judge Francisco Rodríguez in the city of Gracias a Dios in the department of Lempira, and the judge dismissed the charges against both Pinilla and Roldan Jimenez on July 31, 2013. 

Both were represented in court by the law office of Tony Hernández, brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Since then, the police involved in the initial arrest, the police chief in La Iguala, and the judge who heard that July, 2013 legal case against the two Colombians, have all been suspended and are being investigated to see if they have ties to the drug-growing operation or have done anything illegal.

What was publicized this week was a picture of one page of the deposition of the judge who released Pinilla in the 2013 case, conducted by the Public Prosecutor's office. It gives us the judge's claims-- which we can say from the outset will predictably be designed to assign responsibility for this failure of the justice system somewhere else.

Prosecutor's Office:  Asked so that you can say:  do you have any knowledge of these Colombian persons paying money either to the lawyers, the judge and the police to be put at liberty?

Judge:  I personally in no moment had physical contact or communication with Rubén Pinilla and Hernán Jimenez.  The only time I saw them was in the arraignment when they were represented by the law office of Tony Hernandez, brother of the president of the republic of Honduras, and by the lawyer José Antonio Madrid Corea.  Of the thing that they talk about in the newspapers, I don't know anything about who they gave money to, the mechanisms used to give them money, persons involved, and I did not receive money from the two accused and I ask you to investigate me.....you should also investigate to see if at any time I went to the local prison in Gracias, Lempira, to talk to the two accused and I give you my cell phone number [redacted by me] to see if I ever had contact with them in the dates they were deprived of their liberty, from July 24 to 31 in 2013....

A reporter can tweet that this shows that Tony Hernandez was involved in this drug case, but all it actually shows is that, as legal systems in Honduras allow, the defendants even in controversial issues are entitled to legal representation.

The judge's answers to other questions on the single page of testimony released seems to suggest that he freed the defendant because the police failed to supply all the necessary documents to build a case against Pinilla. The page starts in the middle of a response by the judge to a question we cannot see, but that must deal with the legal documents because his response is that "I personally, in all the analysis of the file, this documentation doesn't appear. The deposition continues:

Prosecutor's Office: Asked so you can say: in the initial hearing did you interrogate the agent Pablo Albarenga about the facts just mentioned?

Judge: if I personally had had in the administrative file the said paperwork on the actions carried out by the agent Pablo Albarenga, I would have asked the questions related to those aspects, but it did not exist.

The implication is that this omission might have been deliberate. But that points not at the defense, but the police investigating officer.

That would not be surprising.  But it makes for a far less scandalous story: police in the pocket of organized crime is an old story, not news.