This Monday, March 18, the Honduran prosecutor’s office asked justice confiscate 131 assets “of illicit origin” of former president Juan Orlando Hernández, 10 days following he was found guilty of drug trafficking in a historic trial in the United States.
The prosecutors “promote actions for definitive deprivation of ownership of 131 assets considered of illicit origin registered in the name of former president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, his wife Ana Rosalinda García Carías, among other people in his inner circle,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
#MP seizes 131 assets, commercial companies and financial products from former president Juan Orlando Hernández and his family pic.twitter.com/DUJlu8lYm2
— Public Ministry (@MP_Honduras) March 18, 2024
He detailed that there are 32 properties (land and houses), 19 commercial companies and 80 financial products (bank accounts or deposits).
Justice had ordered a precautionary embargo on these assets in April 2022, when Hernández was extradited to the United States, two months following leaving power.
The prosecution mentioned among the other people close to the former president’s mother, María Elvira Alvarado, and his siblings Aixa Marlene, Amílcar, Juan Antonio (convicted of drug trafficking in the US in 2021) and Hilda (who died in 2021 in an accident helicopter).
On March 8, Hernández was found guilty of drug trafficking and arms trafficking by a jury in a federal court in New York, at the end of a trial that might lead him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Read more: Juan Orlando Hernández might spend the rest of his life in prison for drug trafficking
His sentence will be announced on June 26, according to the US attorney’s office.
The network that he protected since the presidency (2014-2022) would have sent more than 500 tons of cocaine to the United States, according to the prosecutor’s office.
In exchange, Hernández would have received millions of dollars from drug cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, from Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
Last week, a Honduran military court ordered the arrest of two generals who testified in his defense at the trial, who traveled to New York without asking permission from the Honduran military.
Read also: Honduran drug trafficker declared Juan Orlando Hernández at trial: “I was not going to kill my partner”
After the trial, Hernández’s wife announced her intention to seek the presidency of Honduras in 2025 as a candidate for the opposition National Party, the right-wing party that brought her husband to power.
On March 13, the Honduran prosecutor’s office also requested to confiscate the assets of former Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in New York in February to avoid going to trial with Hernández.
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