Drug trafficker Devis Leonel Rivera Madariaga, former leader of the Honduran Los Cachiros cartel and former DEA informant, made a recording revealing that the Former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, had an exclusive aircraft runway for drug trafficking.
Prosecutors from the Southern District Court of New York presented the recording as part of the process to JOH, as the former Honduran president is also known.
The testimony has relevance in the process as it is the first recording about the case of the former president accused of drug trafficking, which is added to evidence with drug accounting notebooks where his name appears.
Rivera Madariaga said he had sent a message to Hernández to find out if he would continue protecting drug trafficking.
According to his testimony, The drug trafficker Arnalo Urbina was in charge of carrying the message to Hernández and then he spoke with Rivera Madariaga, a conversation that was presented today in the drug trafficking trial that has been taking place in New York since January 22 against Hernández, twice president (2014-2022).
“As long as the men remain discreet, there will be no problem,” Urbina told Rivera, allegedly quoting Hernández, according to the transcript.
The Prosecutor’s Office then asked what he meant by “problem,” to which the former drug trafficker, who is serving a life sentence in the United States after surrendering to the authorities of this country in January 2015, explained that Hernández was referring to the margin of Los Cachiros maneuver: “If we continued working discreetly when the drugs arrived, he was going to continue protecting us.”
In another part of the conversation, Urbina and Rivera Madariaga talk about trying to use an illegal runway that Hernández and his younger brother Tony – who is serving a life sentence in the US – allegedly had in Lempira.
When this recording was made in 2014, Rivera Madariaga was already a DEA cooperator, which he began doing in 2013, after the US Government put him on the list of the office for the control of assets abroad. and the Government of Honduras would do the same, as he said on Tuesday when he began to testify.
The former drug trafficker said that Fabio Lobo, son of former president Porfirio Lobo and who is also imprisoned in this country, helped him at that time to avoid these seizures by the Honduran Government by giving him information about what was going to be seized, while the deputy Oscar Nájera, who has allegedly been bribed by drug traffickers, granted him title to those assets.
After that, he recalled, he began to hide drugs, weapons and money that they had there.
According to the witness, another drug trafficker identified as Juan Gómez informed him about the aforementioned landing strip – which also came up in the trial of Tony Hernández in New York – but he admitted that he never saw it.
Rivera Madariaga, who surrendered to United States authorities in 2015, continued detailing how drug trafficking, bribes, murders and meetings operated, including with Fernando Urbina, Arnaldo’s brother.
At that meeting, Fernando told him that his brother was “worried and upset” because JOH had asked him not to run for mayor again because he was “burned out,” that everyone knew that he was a drug trafficker and that this was not good for him. presidential campaign in 2013.
Hernández had requested the same from the then mayor of Copán and drug trafficker Alexander Ardón, who also sat in the witness chair and remembered that request.
Urbina continued in politics and, after the elections, which Hernández won, he was arrested and had his properties confiscated.
Rivera Madariaga, who has admitted to having murdered 78 people and also having tortured his victims, spoke about his relationship with the Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez – also in prison in the US – whom he met between 2009 and 2010 and with whom He trafficked cocaine.
He recalled that in March 2020 he made a deal with the drug trafficker and asked him to travel to Haiti to do so, actually to set him up, since he reported the trip to the DEA and a few days later the man was arrested.
To his surprise, he recalled, that year he met the drug trafficker in the federal prison in Manhattan because they were in the same unit, and he assured that Fuentes approached him and told him that prior to his arrest he had met twice with Hernández and that on the first occasion he had bribed him with 450,000 lempiras (official currency of Honduras).
The second meeting was in the capital and, according to Fuentes, “he bribed JOH (Juan Orlando Hernández) again” in exchange for not being arrested and extradited to the United States and for protection to continue cocaine trafficking.
These meetings between Fuentes and Hernández had been detailed by the witness and deponent José Sánchez, an accountant at Graneros Nacional, where money from drug traffickers was laundered.
With these interrogations of the cooperating drug traffickers, the Prosecutor’s Office tries to establish the consistency of the facts.
With information from EFE
It may interest you:
• Keys to the trial of Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras accused of links to “El Chapo”
• Former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the US where he is accused of drug trafficking
• Juan Orlando Hernández: Supreme Court of Honduras ratifies the extradition to the US of the former president