Citing Hostility, Leader of Anti-Corruption Panel in Honduras Resigns
Honduras wrote that The question now is whether Almagro will step up
and appoint a qualified and experienced prosecutor to replace Juan Jiménez or simply appoint a diplomat disinclined to ruffle feathers in Honduras,
In a letter released late Thursday, the panel’s leader, Juan Jiménez Mayor, a former Peruvian prime minister, said
that his small group of prosecutors had been abandoned as they faced rising hostility from the Honduran government.
In it, he complained that the panel, known by its Spanish initials as the Maccih, "had not been able to produce the results and prosecutions of corruption cases
that we would have wished and which we owe to the people of Honduras." It was an odd complaint to direct at Mr. Hernández, who agreed to the establishment of the panel under pressure after large street protests against corruption in 2015.
Furious, Mr. Jiménez said then that the investigation had spread to about 60 current
and former lawmakers, including the powerful president of the Congress, Mauricio Oliva Herrera, a close ally of the president.
Although Mr. Jiménez said the remaining group, some two dozen experts, would continue its investigations without him, it might
be difficult to attract someone with his background to take charge of the task in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
But the most direct affront came last month, after the attorney general’s new corruption unit, working with the
panel, charged five legislators with pocketing money intended for social projects in their constituencies.