Former Honduran President Trusts Justice Will Prevail in Fraud and Money-Laundering Case

Juan Orlando Hernández is asking supporters in western Honduras to pray that a judge delivers what he calls justice in a case that could send him to the next stage of criminal proceedings.

The judge will rule on Sept. 1 whether to formally charge the former president with fraud and money laundering and order preventive detention, or permanently dismiss the case. The decision concerns the Pandora II investigation, opened in 2023 over the alleged irregular diversion of about $10.8 million between 2010 and 2013, when Hernández led Honduras’ Congress. Prosecutors allege the money helped finance his 2013 election campaign.

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I ask for your prayers always, so that the Lord may enlighten the judge and justice may be done on Tuesday, because this case could not be clearer.

Hernández told a crowd in Gracias, in the Lempira department where he was born, that he remained confident the court would rule in his favor. “I ask for your prayers always, so that the Lord may enlighten the judge and justice may be done on Tuesday, because this case could not be clearer,” he said.

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I have gone day by day whenever the judge has called me, and each day it becomes clearer than ever, as the prosecution’s own witnesses said: we found no trace of money that had remained in Juan Orlando’s hands.

The former president has repeatedly declared his innocence. He said court hearings had shown there was no evidence linking him to the funds, citing testimony from prosecution witnesses. “I have gone day by day whenever the judge has called me, and each day it becomes clearer than ever, as the prosecution’s own witnesses said: we found no trace of money that had remained in Juan Orlando’s hands,” he said.

Hernández returned to Honduras on July 26 after the United States extradited him in 2022. U.S. authorities convicted him in 2024 and sentenced him to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, but that sentence ended after U.S. President Donald Trump granted him a pardon on Dec. 1, 2025. Hernández is facing the Honduran case while free and under a travel ban. A court also decided in August that ordinary courts, rather than the Supreme Court, would handle the proceedings.

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Justice will prevail.