Summary Lobo pleaded guilty in May a year after he was arrested in Haiti and flown to New York.
NEW YORK (AFP) - Six Honduran police officers were charged in absentia in New York on Wednesday in a cocaine smuggling and weapons conspiracy linked to a son of the troubled country’s former president.
The six defendants, aged 39 to 46, were charged a month after Fabio Lobo, son of former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, pled guilty to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
US prosecutors say the officers agreed to give cocaine safe passage through Honduras in exchange for nearly $1 million in bribes from purported Mexican drug smugglers, who were in fact undercover US agents.
The charges come a month after Honduras suspended 30 deputy police commissioners when a government commission revealed alleged connections to organized crime and collusion with drug traffickers.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez appointed the commission in April after police corruption was declared a national emergency.
American prosecutors say Lobo introduced the six police officers to two purported Mexican traffickers in June 2014.
The policemen allegedly agreed to accept bribes of $100,000 each and to pay their subordinates an extra $200,000 to provide armed security for a cocaine shipment bound for the United States.
Lobo pleaded guilty in May a year after he was arrested in Haiti and flown to New York. He is to be sentenced in September.
His father led Honduras from 2010 to 2014, during which time he pledged to fight organized crime.
