TRUE CRIMES IN HONDURAN POLITICS
More than 500+ documents downloaded by the Honduran media Contracorriente from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) site and the Court Listener site as part of its journalistic work to promote access to information for citizens.
Over the past decade, US federal courts have indicted more than a dozen Honduran politicians, members of state security and businessmen for drug trafficking-related crimes. The most powerful defendant faces the next trial: former President Juan Orlando Hernández.
Cases
You can download the documents in two formats.
Who’s involved?
Contracorriente Findings
Here you will read through our journalistic findings.
We are developing a Honduran centered analysis regarding the narco-politics revealed in U.S. legal documents. Our aim is to enhance accessibility to these documents, as they are currently available to the public but require payment for access through the U.S. website known as PACER. This financial barrier limits access for most Hondurans.
Additionally, we've made available translations of these documents into Spanish on the same platform.
¿What is
Honduras: Narcostate on Trial?
This is the site of the Honduran media Contracorriente, in which you can find more than 500 legal documents from the United States, decided in the Southern District Court of New York on the cases of Hondurans prosecuted for links to drug trafficking.
These documents have been purchased and downloaded from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) website and the Courtlistener site to be published free of charge to the public, so that they can be used for Honduran analysis on the cases. Since 2017 Contracorriente has compiled information and processed the documents so that they can be downloaded in two versions: original pdf and an extracted text format translated into Spanish.
It began as a pilot project thanks to the support of The Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Center for Mexico and Central America at Columbia University.
Join a community interested in learning more about how Honduras transformed into a Narco-State.
The most powerful defendant faces the next trial: former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
It is impossible to overstate the importance to the Honduran people the information unveiled through these trials. Never before have we seen transparency regarding the criminal power structures that have brought our country to its knees, creating the conditions from which thousands flee as migrants.
This is how the prosecutor's office describes the actions of former President Hernandez throughout his terms as congressman and then as a two-term president of Honduras. But is Juan Orlando Hernandez the architect of the narco-state?
To understand how a president comes to be accused of trafficking tons of cocaine, you have to go back to the root, to the origins of the narco-state; and this context is provided in the files of the Southern District Court of New York.
Visualize and download
Download the public documents of the cases to be heard in the Southern District Court of New York.
Journalistic findings by Contracorriente
In Contracorriente, we've provided profiles of the accused individuals and interviewed communities affected by drug trafficking. Our investigations have also uncovered further connections to politicians, transnational corporations, banks, offshore companies, and police. You can explore these stories here.
Read more about those implicated:
