An anti-graft mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Honduras said on Tuesday it will investigate a multi-million dollar corruption scandal that has dogged the president of the Central American country, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks during a welcome
ceremony at the National Palace in Mexico City, February 26, 2016.
REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
TEGUCIGALPA: An anti-graft mission of the Organization of
American States (OAS) in Honduras said on Tuesday it will investigate a
multi-million dollar corruption scandal that has dogged the president of
the Central American country, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Critics of Hernandez staged mass protests last year urging him to
resign over his links to the US$200-million (£139 million) fraud at the
Honduran Institute of Social Security, where companies, some formed by
institute officials, overcharged for services.The OAS Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) was announced by Hernandez last September after weeks of demonstrations, though it fell short of what many of his opponents had hoped for.
Still, MACCIH spokesman Juan Jimenez, a former Peruvian minister of justice, said the fraud would be on its list.
"We're in no doubt that we have to take on that case to support the attorney general's office, to support the justice system," Jimenez told a news conference.
Hernandez has admitted his 2013 presidential campaign took
about US$150,000 from companies involved in the scandal, but said he and
his party were unaware of where the money came from.
The Honduran president resisted calls to support an
anti-corruption body such as the separate U.N.-backed team that helped
bring down his Guatemalan counterpart Otto Perez last September.
(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
- Reuters
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