Caribbean & Central America - September 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

On 9 September Mario Zelaya Rojas, former head of the social security institute (Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social, IHSS) was arrested near the Nicaraguan border after being on the run since January. Zelaya is suspected of being the protagonist in one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit Honduras in decades having been accused of embezzling more than US$300m from the IHSS. Zelaya, who was head of the IHSS between February 2010 and January 2014, has been charged with fraud, bribery, abuse of public funds, and money laundering, all of which he denies. Security Minister Arturo Corrales said in a statement following Zelaya’s arrest: "We're proving that impunity is a thing of the past, and that impunity won't prevail, justice will”.

After a judicial hearing hastily convened the morning of his arrest, the judge ordered Zelaya’s immediate detention. Over the last few months more than US$7m worth of assets including mansions, apartments, land and vehicles have been found under Zelaya's control. The alleged fraud involved overpricing goods and services, such as ambulances, by more than 100%. Businesses that benefited allegedly paid commission to officials, two of which Carlos Montes and Javier Pastor, the ex-vice ministers of the labour and health ministries respectively, have already been arrested and are being held alongside Zelaya. Authorities emphasized that the scale of the corruption has still to be determined; it has been alleged that over 320 people benefited from Zelaya’s actions.

The operation to capture Zelaya, dubbed Operation Libélula, commenced in April of this year and involved the national police, the military and two new police forces — the Tigres rapid-response unit and the Policía Militar de Orden Público (PMOP). President Hernández praised the cooperation of the different authorities involved in the search. There was some confusion over the location of Zelaya’s arrest. Zelaya’s lawyer, Marcelino Vargas, claimed in an interview on 10 September that Zelaya had been detained alone in Managua, across the border in Nicaragua, by “masked persons” and later delivered to the Honduran police. This contrasts with the statement released the day before by President Juan Orlando Hernández, in which he announced that Zelaya had been seized by Honduran military police at 1:30am in El Paraíso in Honduras heading towards the Nicaraguan border at Las Manos.

President Hernández, elected in November 2013, has made fighting corruption a cornerstone of his government. The US was quick to praise Zelaya’s arrest, with US ambassador to Honduras, James Nealon, tweeting: “We congratulate the Honduran government…another blow against impunity. I hope the fight against corruption continues”. Zelaya will appear in court for another hearing on 12 September. He faces a sentence of 15 to 20 years if found guilty of money laundering.

Box Doctors, nurses and health care workers staged a ‘Dignity March’ in several cities on 24 August in protest at the deteriorated state of the public health system. The president of the Honduran medical college (CMH), Elmer Mayes, said that the government had left the health system in “total abandonment”. “We are health soldiers and without arms we can’t have results,” he declared, adding that doctors and nurses work “with their hands alone”. Health Minister Yolani Batres took umbrage at the protest, warning of sanctions against striking workers. She told a press conference that President Hernández had ordered a thorough review of the national health system upon taking office in late January, starting with “a new and transparent mechanism for the purchase of quality medicines, at a fair cost, from suppliers of confidence, delivering immediate savings of 300%”. She did not elaborate with actual figures, but continued that since early August these new supplies had been distributed across the country. She added that the government was taking disciplinary measures aimed at improving the quality of service and stressed that it would not allow the health of people to be used as an excuse for unions to negotiate salary demands. End box

• Health spending

According to the World Health Organisation, Honduras spent a relatively high 8.6% of GDP on health in 2012, or US$354 per capita annually (in adjusted international dollar terms). However, most of its health indicators are worse than the regional average, including infant and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, and the prevalence of HIV, TB and malaria.