The former leader of the Honduran cartel The Cachiros, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, testified this Wednesday in the trial against the alleged Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, ensuring that he worked with him to ensure the safety of several cocaine shipments.
The third session of the trial, in which the US Federal Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Fuentes Ramírez collaborated for years with the current President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, focused on delving into the relationship between the head of Los Cachiros and the accused.
Likewise, to questions from the Prosecutor’s Office, Rivera’s account was plagued with references to allegedly corrupt police, military and mayors involved in drug trafficking, such as the councilor of the town of Choloma, Leopoldo “Polo” Crivelli, and his son Polito Crivelli.
According to the witness, who is serving a sentence in the United States and testifies at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, the mayor of Choloma offered information to drug traffickers “when the police came from the fight against drug trafficking. They came from Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula to carry out operations there in Choloma, where the accused (Geovanny Fuentes) lived. “
“Corrupt contacts help to remove operations when the drug is passing from one place to another,” said the witness before adding that he had these types of contacts “throughout Honduras.”
The Prosecutor’s Office, as it did during the trial against the brother of the president of Honduras, Tony Hernández, held at the end of 2019 also in New York, defends that the Central American country is a “narco-state.”
Cartel boss
In this Wednesday’s session, Rivera recounted in detail how he met the accused Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez and he spoke of three occasions in which he worked with him to transport cocaine shipments that arrived by plane to Honduras to the border with Guatemala, where they were delivered to the cartel of the Valle Brothers.
Rivera assured that he met the accused between 2009 and 2010 through the mediation of another drug dealer, Melvin Sandres, nicknamed “Metro” for his links with the metropolitan police.
To questions from the Prosecutor’s Office, Rivera explained that in the first meeting he had with Fuentes Ramírez, in the parking lot of a gas station owned by the leader of Los Cachiros, the accused told him that he had good contacts with the Honduras Military Police and with the Preventive Police.
“Look cousin, I have some good contacts here right now in Honduras with the Military police and the Preventive Police for whatever concerns him, “the defendant then told the cartel boss in that first meeting at the” Brisas del Mar “gas station.
The Los Cachiros chief added that Fuentes Ramírez offered to guard and transport the cocaine shipments that arrived from Colombia in speedboats and planes and were then transported to Guatemala on their way to Mexico and ultimately to the United States.
According to his testimony, the defendant also told him that he had worked with Metro in Miami (United States) selling cocaine (between one and five kilograms a month), but that he had returned to Honduras because they “were looking for them.”
For the leader of the Honduran cartel, the role of Geovanny Fuentes Rámirez “was very important” because “when the police put themselves at checkpoints to carry out operations in the street, the accused would speak to his police contacts and they would already take off.” EFE
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