Honduras: Embezzled Funds Used to Elect President

2015-06-06 1

A congressional investigation in Honduras reveals 13 cases of corruption, according to a report released on Thursday, most of which occurred in the previous Porfirio Lobo administration, when more than US$500million were stolen from different institutions. Huge amounts of money embezzled from the Social Security Institute were also used in the election campaign of the current President Juan Hernandez. The executive acknowledges that this occurred, but says he didn’t know about it. His ruling National Party also says it is not to blame and called a demonstration to support Hernandez. This came after a long series of protest marches against government corruption and impunity. Critics of the report say it does name some public figures, but the identities of the masterminds are not revealed, supposedly because the investigation is still underway. They promise the names will be released later on, but public pressure is growing to demand the immediate resignation of all public officials involved. Gerardo Torres reports from Central America for teleSUR.