By Gustavo Palencia
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Honduras will sign an agreement Thursday to install a United Nations-backed anti-corruption mission in the country, a foreign ministry official said Wednesday, making good on a key campaign pledge of President Xiomara Castro to root out graft.
Castro met with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York earlier on Wednesday, wrapping up talks which began in May to create the anti-corruption commission known as CICIH, her office said in a post on social media.
The foreign ministry tweeted that the agreement will be signed Thursday, but later took down the post. A ministry official who asked to remain anonymous told Reuters the agreement will still be signed Thursday.
Castro’s daughter Xiomara Zelaya, a member of Congress who leads the legislature’s foreign relations committee, also said in a tweet the agreement will be inked on Thursday.
Last year, the leftist Castro ran on a campaign promise of establishing the graft-prosecuting commission to hold often untouchable bad actors accountable, following the scandal-plagued government of right-wing former President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Hernandez was extradited to the United States earlier this year on drug-trafficking charges.
Corruption in Honduras siphons off some $3 billion a year, according to U.S. diplomats and non-government organizations, deepening poverty and spurring migration.
A similar mission supported by the Organization of the American States (OAS) operated in Honduras until January 2020, but disbanded after then-President Hernandez let its mandate expire.
The OAS mission, called the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), was created in 2016 and led corruption investigations into officials, legislators and Hernandez himself.
The OAS-backed investigations led to the convictions of several of those close to Hernandez, including his predecessor Porfirio Lobo, whose wife, Rosa Elena Lobo, was found guilty of illicit enrichment.
(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Stephen Coates)
