Honduras President accused of accepting bribes from drug traffickers

The Honduran President,Juan Orlando Hernández, has been accused of accepting bribes from drug traffickers and ordering the country's armed forces to guard acocaine laboratory and shipments.

US federal prosecutors have filed motions againstHernández and have also submitted evidence claiming he said he wanted to "shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos by flooding the United States with cocaine".

The motions have been filed by the prosecutors in thesouthern district of New York.Hernández has been referred to as "CC4" or theco-conspirator No4. However, his brother, also aco-conspirator has been specifically named in the motions. His brother's name and his designation as 'President' has made the accusation againstHernández clear.

"By late 2013, the defendant partnered directly with CC4 and high-ranking officials in the Honduran military. At this time, CC4 was pursuing election as the president of Honduras as a member of the Partido Nacional de Honduras (the ‘National Party’)," the motion states.

Despite the conviction ofJuan Antonio Hernández, one of his brothers, in 2019, the President has repeatedly denied all accusations against him. He was accused of accepting more than$1m from the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán during the 2019 trial, which he denied. The same accusation has been repeated in the recently-filed motions too.

The President, this time, has claimed these accusations are being made by the traffickers as a way to seekvengeance from him after he was 'successful' in clamping down traffickers' operations in the country.

Federal prosecutors have also named severalsenior military, police, political and business figures in these motions for accepting bribery and laundering money in similar illegal operations.