{"id":12802,"date":"2024-09-29T04:05:48","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T04:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12802"},"modified":"2024-09-29T04:05:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T04:05:48","slug":"a-lawsuit-from-backers-of-a-startup-city-could-bankrupt-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12802","title":{"rendered":"A Lawsuit From Backers of a \u2018Startup City\u2019 Could Bankrupt Honduras"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The flurry of private contracts became part of a \u201ckleptocratic\u201d regime, according to one 2017 report<\/a> by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Nearly all of the ISDS claims have their roots in contracts, laws or other agreements made during this period.<\/p>\n

For the farmers and villagers being pushed off their land, or having their water resources privatized, the development rush converged with spiraling violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowhere are you more likely to be killed for standing up to companies that grab land and trash the environment,\u201d the international watchdog group Global Witness wrote in 2017<\/a>, \u201cthan in Honduras.\u201d<\/p>\n

An opponent of a project that became the subject of two ISDS claims was murdered the following year.<\/p>\n

At the center of these new laws and contracts was Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, who was president of the congress when the ZEDE law was passed and was elected president of Honduras later in 2013. Hern\u00e1ndez would serve two terms as president\u2014a step prohibited by the Constitution. The US Department of Justice would later charge that Hern\u00e1ndez used millions of dollars in payments from drug cartels to help buy off local officials to secure his electoral victories.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Hern\u00e1ndez, his brother and his chief of the national police would be extradited to the United States and convicted of drug trafficking and weapons charges. Hern\u00e1ndez, US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said<\/a>, used his time in power to run \u201cone of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez was convicted in March of this year and sentenced to 45 years in prison, while the former national police chief was sentenced to 19 years<\/a>. His brother is serving a life sentence<\/a>. Hern\u00e1ndez did not reply to a request for an interview from prison.<\/p>\n

Brimen, Honduras Pr\u00f3spera\u2019s CEO, who immigrated to the United States from Venezuela, has said his goal is to provide a model that would foster prosperity, helping alleviate poverty by streamlining unnecessary bureaucracies that hobble governments, especially in parts of Latin America.<\/p>\n

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