Caribbean & Central America - October 2026

After being pardoned at the end of last year by President Donald Trump in relation to a drug and weapons related conviction for which he was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US [SSR-26-01], Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández (Partido Nacional, PN, 2014-2022) has now returned to Honduras where he has been cleared in a domestic corruption case, and is effectively now a free man. The judicial proceedings and decision to drop the charges against him unsurprisingly have been criticised by local anti-corruption groups who warn that it augurs badly for the direction of Honduran justice.

After Trump’s pardon in December 2025, shortly after the general election which produced a victory for Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura, also of the PN, Hernández returned to Honduran soil on 26 July to face trial over a separate case. That case, known as Pandora II, was an expansion of the Pandora case, a major corruption investigation launched in 2018 which implicated both the PN and main opposition Partido Liberal (PL) [SSR-18-11]. Unveiled in 2023 under the previous leftist Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) government led by former president Xiomara Castro (2022-2026) [SSR-23-12], Pandora II involved allegations that, along with other former top officials, Hernández was part of corruption network from 2010-2013. This network allegedly embezzled public funds worth over L288m (US$11m) for political campaigns ahead of the 2013 general election, which resulted in Hernández’s first victory.

In response to Hernández’s return to Honduras in late July, Gabriela Castellanos, the head of local anti-corruption lobby group Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción (CNA), described it as “a test… for the Honduran justice system”. Just over a month later, on 1 September, the supreme court (CSJ) announced the verdict – that charges against him had been definitively dismissed on the grounds that the evidence did not “determine his participation in the investigated events”.

The verdict was not a huge surprise given previous favourable rulings regarding others implicated in the case. These included Hernández’s predecessor Porfirio Lobo (PN, 2010-2014), whose charges were dropped in July. Juan Carlos Aguilar, the director of democracy and transparency at Asociación para una Sociedad Más Justa (ASJ), the local chapter of anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, told regional investigative media group Expediente Público that the verdict had been highly likely, noting the dismissal of charges against 22 of the 26 accused in the Pandora case in 2020 [WR-20-32]. Amid long-running concerns about the independence of Honduran institutions, the decision to drop the charges against Hernández came as the ruling party has strengthened its hold over the judiciary since Asfura took office in January, due to a loose alliance the PN has forged with the PL providing it with effective control of the 128-member unicameral congress. Among other things, this resulted in the controversial decision in March to eject Attorney General Johel Zelaya (2023-2026), a Libre ally [SSR-26-06].

The verdict was condemned by CNA, which questioned the absence of a key witness in the case, Fernando José Suárez Ramírez, the legal representative of two NGOs, Todos Somos Honduras and Dibattista, implicated in the 2013 campaign finance case. Suárez was released last month from a prison sentence that he began nearly eight years earlier in relation to the Pandora case. In a video post on social media, Castellanos questioned how it was that “the attorney general’s main witness was not available when required in the proceedings” and more generally whether “our judicial apparatus can handle corruption cases when the accused belongs to the political class”.

Drug allegations

According to a US Department of Justice statement released at the time of his sentencing in the US in June 2024, as president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022, Juan Orlando Hernández “abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world”. It adds that during his political career, Hernández used his power to “facilitate the importation of over 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US” and “received millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere… to fuel his rise in Honduran politics”.

Another high-profile acquittal

On 24 August Amílcar Alexander ‘Chande’ Ardón Soriano, a former mayor (PN, 2006-2014), of El Paraíso, Copán department, was absolved of money laundering allegations. Ardón’s trial, which began on 5 August, drew headlines as he had been a key witness in the US trial against Hernández and his brother Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, who received a life sentence for drug trafficking.

Although Ardón himself was indicted in the US in 2019 on drug and firearm charges, his cooperation with US authorities and guilty plea led to a January 2025 sentence of time served. He was then deported to Honduras in April 2025, to face domestic money laundering charges. 

On 24 August Honduras’ judiciary announced Ardón’s acquittal due to errors in the prosecution’s case and cancelled the preventative detention order against him. While two days later the attorney general’s office (MP) announced that Rony Alexis Reyes Torres, the head of the MP’s financial unit; Walter Aroldo Mendoza Carías, an assigned prosecutor; and Aleyda Dinora Rodríguez Aguilar, an expert witness, had been fired as a result, this is unlikely to have assuaged civil society groups’ concerns regarding the independence of the judiciary. 

Ardón

In January 2019, Amílcar Alexander ‘Chande’ Ardón Soriano was charged in the US with conspiring to import cocaine into the US and with related firearms offences. After surrendering to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he entered a cooperation agreement with US authorities and pleaded guilty to “drug trafficking, murders, the use of automatic weapons, money laundering, and cooperating with other drug traffickers in the use of high-powered guns.” He admitted being responsible for 56 murders, injuring six other people, and engaging in torture.