Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is being investigated by the Drug Enforcement Agency for drug running od cocaine and money laundering. The DEA has been investigating Hernandez and eight others since January of 2014.
Feds say the drug running was done on a large scale and they had to resort to money laundering to get the money back to Honduras. Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was charged with “large-scale” cocaine trafficking from 2004 to 2016 and the bribery of local officials to look the other way as he was importing large shipments of cocaine.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is one of the main targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into “large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities” related to the “importation of cocaine into the United States,” according to a court filing.
The document, filed Thursday, states the DEA has been investigating Hernández and eight others since 2013. Hernández became president in January 2014.
Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was charged by U.S. federal prosecutors in New York last November for “large-scale” cocaine trafficking from 2004 to 2016. The charges included bribing local officials in Miami to overlook cocaine shipments arriving in the region, making false statements to federal agents, and possessing and using assault-style weapons as part of his operation.
“Hernandez and his criminal associates allegedly conspired with some of the world’s most deadly and dangerous transnational criminal networks in Mexico and Colombia to flood American streets with deadly drugs,” Special Agent in Charge Raymond Donovan said in a statement.
Honduras is at the center of a migration phenomenon that has been unfolding over the past five years. During fiscal 2018, which began Oct. 1, 2017, approximately 76,000 Honduran citizens were encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border after illegally crossing north.