Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Cartel payoff: Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán personally gave a $1 million donation to the 2013 political campaign of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, U.S. prosecutors told a New York City courtroom this week. The allegation was made during the prosecution’s opening statement in the drugtrafficking trial of the president’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández. Prosecutors said El Chapo delivered the cash to Tony Hernández in 2013 and in return expected Tony’s brother, if he was elected president, to let him smuggle cocaine through Honduras. Opposition groups have called Hernández a narco-dictator, saying he used cartel money to rig his 2017 re-election. An ally of President Trump on immigration, President Hernández called the latest allegations “100 percent false, absurd, and ridiculous.”