LatinNews Daily Report - 03 August 2012

POLITICS | Finance minister quits. Finance Minister Héctor ‘Tito Guillén resigned on 1 August after his wife was discovered with US$59,055 in cash when her car was stopped and searched by police on 31 July. Dinora Aranburry de Guillén, who was travelling along with her 18-year old son and a driver between the capital, Tegucigalpa, and San Pedro Sula, was temporarily detained before being released.  She told police that the cash, a huge sum for the average Honduran, was going to be used to buy US dollars so as to purchase goods in Guatemala for a bed distribution business owned by the Guillén family. In defence of his wife, Héctor Guillén declared that moving money around was not a crime but said he was resigning in order to deal personally with the issue. Yesterday, a Honduran journalist suggested on TV that the cash had come from royalty payments (of some US$168,000) made just days earlier by a shrimp company in southern Honduras to a government official which, if true, might better explain the finance minister’s decision.

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