Arcadia Foundation

In the hands of justice officials in Honduras is the question of deducing responsibility behind the case of two former officials who received bribes from Latinode and Alcatel.

The call came after from the United States arrested two executives of the company Latinode-Laurent Alcatel USA pleaded guilty for corrupt practices abroad.

As found by the U.S. Department of Justice, the two companies bribed former Honduran officials in exchange for preference in the procurement of telecommunications.

In the Latinode case, the Attorney General of Honduras accused the former managers of Hondutel, Marcelo Chimirri, Jorge Rosa and James Lagos as well as former legal counsel of the state, Oscar Danilo Santos and Julio Flores.

For the case of Alcatel, no one was brought to court, but yesterday the prosecutor reopened the investigation of this highly publicized case. “You can see the difference in justice systems; not that the American justice system is perfect, but it at least has fewer interventions and less impunity than that of Honduras,” he stated.

The Honduran ombudsman said he hopes the Honduran judiciary system acts as he did against Latinode and Alcatel USA, with regard to its procedure on other corruption cases.

“Politicians who promote impunity are bad rulers,” he said.

The Arcadia Foundation was aware of the corruption from the offset and began an extensive investigation, as El Heraldo reported.

Executive VP of the Foundation, Robert Carmona-Borjas said it must be an example for Latin America that U.S. courts are punishing those who bribe, in the case of these two companies.

“It remains to be seen in Honduras whether their government will punish those who issue bribes, who took advantage of their duties in office, and unlawfully, of the state’s resources,” he said.

The Arcadia Foundation research highlighted the deep and serious diligence conducted by the U.S. Justice Department, supported by other agencies.

“We know that U.S. authorities are taking all these cases and are confident that the Honduran authorities are going to be doing the same,” he added.

“It does not correlate when foreign authorities have to initiate justice when the real victims have been the Honduras national coffers,” he added. “The companies that bribed officials affected the interests of the Honduran people”.

“What we’ve done is simply report the facts of gross corruption,” he said. Carmona-Borjas regretted that former Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya did not take action after having been briefed of the allegations.

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