The other day a sub-committee in the US Congress had a hearing about Honduras. Among the things brought up were some economical affairs including a settlement in a USAmerican court granting a USAmerican company $51M in compensation from the Republic of Honduras. They insisted that Honduras deal with this.
Honduras has now started to do so. It turns out the money was awarded in a settlement, the legitimacy of which under Honduran law is questionable. In fact, they are investigating at present if the persons involved at the institution in question, FHIS, are guilty of corruption for the way in which they possibly misrepresented their country. The disputed contract dealt with reconstruction after hurricane Mitch, which hit in 1998.
This reminded me of a story that went around the blogosphere last summer. Manuel Zelaya was from 1994 the director of FHIS, and at that time he dealt with Hugo Llorens, the present USAmerican ambassador to Honduras. A corruption scandal was also implied.
Could it be that these two stories are linked? Could it be that Llorens is now running Honduras as a USAmerican viceroy just so that they can complete the corruption and bring the money home? Is Barack Obama a pawn in a banana-republic corruption scandal?
If he is not, or does not wish to be, he should fire that Llorens figure faster than quick. He seems dirtier than the lahar that leveled two towns in Nicaragua during Mitch.
On the other hand, Hugo Llorens was the US ambassador to Venezuela during the failed coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the only ambassador to side with the coupsters. What’s the deal with this Llorens, does he have no moral compass, or does he just dislike presidents who share his name? Or was Zelaya intended as a double agent in ALBA? Does he in reality work for CIA? Myself I don’t believe in ideology as a driving force for these men. No, personal crass economic self-interest makes a more compelling argument in my opinion. Corruption, in other words. Either that, or stupidity. But time will tell, time will tell.
