The death of 46 women at the National Penitentiary for Social Adaptation (PNFAS) brought to light bad decisions by the State amid a prison crisis that had shown warning signs. Xiomara Castro’s administration improvised an intervention in the prison system which demanded more time to make necessary changes and was affected by the lack of action by the National Police, according to Security Vice Minister, Julissa Villanueva, who led the intervention. It was a matter of time for such a tragedy to take place, but now that the military police have taken over the prison system in response, some fear that those who planned the massacre and benefit from the chaos at PNFAS will never be held accountable.

At the entrance to the Metropolitan Preventative Police Unit (Unidad Metropolitana de Prevención – UMEP) in the city of Trujillo in northern Honduras, once the haven of the drug trafficking cartel ‘Los Cachiros’, a vehicle with more than a hundred large caliber bullet holes sits on display.

Honduras’ National Police, a key tool for the narco-state, now struggles to reform itself under the new government.

As detained former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández faces extradition to the United States on three drug trafficking charges, this investigation examines a group of his relatives and friends, who have been partners for years in a maze of charities and companies in Honduras and Florida, multiple of which have no apparent business activity. The paper trail also leads to Panama. The associates – including the current Honduran ambassadors to Mexico and the Dominican Republic, a nephew of the former president, and a former financial consultant to the congress – told us that their ventures didn’t succeed due to a decade-old scandal involving one of their charities, Fundecima.