Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez is needed within the US on drug trafficking and weapons costs, which he denies.
Honduran authorities have seized the properties, monetary holdings and different belongings belonging to former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who’s dealing with extradition to the USA to face drug trafficking and weapons costs.
The Ministry of Public Affairs mentioned in a press release on Friday that following an investigation into Hernandez’s household belongings, authorities “executed operations to safe and seize materials and immaterial belongings, business companies and monetary merchandise linked to the household nucleus”.
Ministry spokesman Yuri Mora advised the AFP information company that 33 properties, eight business companies, 16 autos and several other monetary merchandise had been seized.
The transfer comes after Hernandez, who left workplace in January after eight years in energy and was as soon as a key US ally in its battle in opposition to drug trafficking, was arrested in mid-February, a day after Washington requested his extradition.
A month later, a Honduran choose ordered his extradition, which was not too long ago upheld by the Supreme Courtroom following an attraction, opening the door for him to face the fees in US courtroom.
Hernandez’s critics have celebrated the information of his extradition, viewing it as a long-overdue step to carry a corrupt chief accountable.
The 53-year-old former president misplaced his immunity after handing energy over to Xiomara Castro, the nation’s first feminine president, in late January.
He’s accused of accepting tens of millions of {dollars} in bribes to guard drug traffickers from investigation and prosecution, together with from Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Hernandez additionally faces conspiracy costs to import a managed substance into the US, utilizing or carrying firearms together with machine weapons, and conspiracy to make use of or carry firearms.
The main target of prosecutors’ accusations is that Hernandez used bribes and assist from drug traffickers to gas his political rise from a congressman representing rural Lempira in western Honduras to president of the Nationwide Congress after which two consecutive presidential phrases.
Se continúa con la operación de aseguramiento de bienes de expresidente pic.twitter.com/aY8ZcdaJb5
— Ministerio Público (@MP_Honduras) April 1, 2022
Hernandez has denied all the fees in opposition to him, saying that he’s the “sufferer of revenge and conspiracy”.
His spouse, Ana Garcia, additionally joined a gaggle of a few dozen protesters exterior the Supreme Courtroom in Tegucigalpa this week to proclaim his innocence. “If a citizen is tried, they need to be tried in our nation,” she mentioned.
Many of the allegations in opposition to Hernandez emerged in two trials in New York — these of Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, the ex-president’s brother and a former Honduran congressman, and Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez.
Each males have been a part of a sprawling drug trafficking case filed in 2015 and each got life sentences.
If convicted, Hernandez might face life in jail.