A brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández should be sentenced to life imprisonment for running “a criminal association for drug trafficking” along with the country’s current president along with the country’s current president, US federal prosecutors say in documents presented before his sentencing hearing for next week.
Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Honduran lawmaker, was found guilty in October 2019 of participating in a scheme to smuggle cocaine into the United States using machine guns.
His sentence, which has been postponed several times, is scheduled in New York on Tuesday.
The documents presented by the New York City Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday night describe Tony Hernández’s criminal history, as well as the times when he coincided in the crimes with his brother, who previously served as leader of the Honduras Congress. take up the chair in January 2014.
“The defendant was a Honduran lawmaker who, along with his brother Juan Orlando Hernández, played a leading role in a violent state-sponsored drug trafficking program,” the prosecutors wrote.
The United States government wants Tony Hernández to return $ 138.5 million in “blood money” from his drug trafficking operations, and pay an additional $ 10 million fine.
“Over a 15-year period, the defendant has corrupted Honduras’s democratic institutions to enrich himself by transporting at least 185,000 kilograms of cocaine, a staggering amount of poison that he helped import into the United States,” the prosecution wrote. He alleges that Hernández also sold weapons to drug traffickers, some from the Honduran military, and controlled drug laboratories in Colombia and Honduras.
“Between 2004 and 2019, the defendant secured and distributed millions of dollars in drug trafficking bribes to Juan Orlando Hernández, former Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa and other politicians associated with the National Party of Honduras,” prosecutors said.
They claim the bribes include one for a million dollars from Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, addressed to Juan Orlando Hernández.
President Hernández has repeatedly denied any connection to drug trafficking, as has Lobo, whose son is currently serving a 24-year sentence in a US prison for drug trafficking.