“It was not in my thoughts to kill my partner,” a Honduran drug boss declared before the United States justice on Wednesday, February 28, explaining that he did not participate in a plan to assassinate then-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was being tried for drug trafficking in Nueva York.
Devis Leonel Rivera, founder along with his brother Javier of the Honduran cartel Los Cachiros, outlined the links with the Honduran political class, including the former president, whom He helped with his financial contributions to rise to public office in exchange for protection for cocaine trafficking from Colombia.
The confessed author of 78 murders, the drug trafficker began collaborating with the US anti-drug agency (DEA) in 2013 before surrendering to US authorities in January 2015.
Rivera recalled that the brothers Arnulfo and Luis Valle, from the Valle-Valle cartel, wanted to kill Juan Orlando Hernández and his brother Tony Hernández. because the authorities had “seized several properties” and had stopped responding to their phone calls.
The then deputy of the Cortés department, Reynaldo Ekónomo, spoke with Rivera, whom he had known since 2004, and he told him that despite the fact that the Valle brothers had asked him to participate in the assassination planned at the beginning of his first term (2014-2018 ), I do not accept”.
“It was not in my thoughts to kill my partner, whom I had bribed (in exchange for protection) and, secondly, he was already working with the DEA,” Rivera, who is serving a life sentence plus 30 years for importing more than 5 kg of drugs into the United States, for arms trafficking, for being a gang leader, told the prosecutor. drug traffickers, for 78 murders and money laundering.
Read more: “He got a lot of money”: Prosecutor’s Office says that Juan Orlando Hernández protected drug traffickers
In another telephone conversation with Ekónomo in which the then president was supposedly present, Rivera would have reassured Hernández by saying: “At no time have I wanted to harm him.”
After that conversation, Ekónomo told him that “Juan Orlando” was “satisfied with the explanation.”
In exchange for the intermediation, Ekónomo would have asked the drug trafficker for “US$60 thousand, a truck and a house in Tegucigalpa” and he gave him between “US$40 thousand and US$60 thousand and a white truck.”
“Regretful”
Throughout his interrogation, which began on Tuesday afternoon, Rivera has highlighted the links between drug trafficking and Honduran politics.
In cross-examination by Hernández’s defense, lawyer Raymond Colon asked him if he regretted the murders he carried out or asked to be carried out.
“Not in his time, but now I regret having killed but I also regret having bribed the corrupt politicians of the government of my country, such as (also former president) Pepe (Porfirio) Lobo, Juan Orlando Hernández, the military ( …), police who instead of taking the bribes should have arrested us,” the drug traffickers, he said.
“They became drug traffickers like us,” said the boss who seeks to reduce his sentence with his collaboration with the prosecution.
In his 13 years as a drug trafficker, he said that he had amassed about “US$55 million” despite having to pay “US$250,000 to bribe” JOH, the acronym by which the former president in Honduras is known, who would have given them to his sister Hilda Hernández.
Another “US$50 thousand” to his brother Tony Hernández, “US$800 thousand to Juan Orlando’s allies”, “about US$600 thousand to Pepe Lobo”, among other politicians who protected him, he detailed.
Before the jury that will give its verdict, the defense intends to undermine the credibility of the witnesses who seek benefits in exchange for their statements, especially by insisting on their criminal history, making them fall into contradictions, and the lack of evidence for the payment of bribes that they they allege.
“The only proof that the drug traffickers had was the word,” Rivera told the lawyer, not without sarcasm.
According to the DEA, between 90% and 95% of the cocaine consumed in the United States comes from Colombia and since 2004, around 92% to 94% passes through Central America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala) before crossing Mexico.
Read also: Juan Orlando Hernández: The former president of Honduras, on trial in New York for drug trafficking
San Pedro Sula, the economic capital of Honduras, is the main “hub” or operations center of the route, said Jennifer Taul, a DEA drug trafficking specialist, during the trial of the former president of Honduras.
Hernández faces accusations of conspiring with drug trafficking and of trafficking and possession of weapons, which could lead him to spend the rest of his days in prison, like his brother Tony Hernández, another central figure in the multinational organized crime and drug company.
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