Juan Orlando Hernández continues to deny any relationship with drug traffickers. | Photo: Twittter/@tcsnoticias

Tegucigalpa, March 14 (RHC)--A Honduran drug trafficker has confessed to a U.S. Court that he bribed President Juan Orlando Hernández with $250,000 to avoid prosecution in 2012.

The former leader of the Los Cachiros cartel, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, said that the money was delivered to the president's sister Hilda Hernández in return for "protection so that the military police and preventive police didn’t capture us in Honduras."

Juan Orlando Hernández continues to deny any relationship with drug traffickers.  However, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández was prosecuted over this charge in the U.S. in 2019.

During the fourth day of hearings in the trial of drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, the head of Cachiros cartel also confessed that, in 2012, he paid $500,000 to Ricardo Alvarez, Hondura's current Vice President.  In exchange, Alvarez would avoid the extradition of Los Cachiros to the United States.