Marcelo Chimirri’s House Being Searched
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As la Gringa said yesterday, there’s never a shortage of blog material in Honduras. Apparently in the early hours of today, agents of the DGIC (the Honduran equivalent of the FBI) forced entry into Marcelo Chimirri’s sprawling mansion. She was able to describe the house in a blog post, because Chimirri foolishly put up pictures of it in his Hi5 profile. He later took them down. It is a multi-building complex, about one third of the size of the Bill Gates mansion. Chimirri put up pictures of himself in front of his Hummer, his Harley, and in front of the Eiffel tower.
Apparently the agents waited until Chimirri was not at home; he is in La Ceiba today, a source says. The president is also not here, he is in South America attending a summit. I am a little confused about this. Are the president’s enemies capitalizing on his absence to do this now? Or could the president have put this in motion when he was away in order to distance himself from Chimirri?
The news media are at the house, speculating on the reason why this would occur. Unfortunately, there is much talk, but little substance. In the phone conversations that were leaked on You Tube, he said that undercover DGIC agents had been at his house before, and fired on his bodyguards. The police captured them, and were forced to release them when they identified themselves as members of the anti-drug division of the DGIC. You can listen to the conversations in the profile of Juana Pueblo on YouTube.
While I was preparing this post, the Heraldo has put up an article describing the situation. The article reports that the agents wish to discover if Chimirri himself was behind the leaking of recordings of cell phone conversations between himself, the president, and other high government officials. According to the article, the Hondutel building and Chimirri’s house are being held as a “precautionary measure”. How the government can do that without evidence is something I do not know, do they have any?
Having been in one of these “allanamientos”, I can tell you that it is something I would not desire to my enemies. His wife and children must be terrified watching people trample all over their house and take away everything, wondering when they’ll see him again. I hope real justice is done, and that Chimirri is not just a small fish, that is captured to let the big fish escape.
Image by Mark Strozier, used with a Creative Commons license
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I’m watching it on the news right now. We were wondering the same thing are you — as regards Mel Zelaya being out of the country. Did he order it but wanted to claim he was out of the country and didn’t know? Did the DGIC/Fiscalía plan the operation without his knowledge? This should have happened months ago.
As far as taking control of his property, etc.: I think they have to protect the evidence, don’t you? I wouldn’t be surprised if all the evidence didn’t disappear months ago. I heard that Chimirri finally resigned from Hondutel.
So much going on! I’m having a hard time keeping up.
While there is a sense of sweet justice to the humiliation that Chimirri is being subjected to, it is unfortunate that the children of a corrupt politicians have to fall into the trauma.
But let us all remember that Chimirri himself has subjected many to this treatment. My only real concerns are:
1. Is this self imposed by Chimirri so that the investigation finds nothing, only strengthening his position as being “honest” (almost at full gag).
2. Ministerio Publico will do things @$$ backwards as usual and he will have a technical way out of the atrocities he has committed to the honduran people.
3. While I think he is a moron, he has proven to be cunning. And there has been talk of him being involved directly in grey termination for a while now, is it possible there be proof left on premises that the DGIC could find? I mean come on, people have been saying this for a long time now, if they actually find proof, that would make him the dumbest man alive.
All in all, I think this is going to make Chimirri a rich(er) man. He is going to be able to attack the actions of the DGIC and he is going to win (it is not exactly hard to win against this country if you can stay alive long enough to collect).
But God bless the show, and I would like to see the clue behind “deep tissue full cavity search for Chimirri” for 2000 Alex.
-Nony
I had been reading La Gringas blog on all that she has posted about Chimirri and everything else that has been going on, and from there I was looking it up the best I could online trying to keep up. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
~Jennifer
Wow, Gringa, you have more faith than I. I never expected this to happen. Many times when the “fiscalia” does this kind of thing, other things, like computers, televisions, etc, are also seized on the grounds that they were bought with the proceeds from a criminal act. However, these things, since they aren’t directly related to the charges can easily become “lost” into the had of a corrupt officer or two.
A friend of mine told me that Chimirri lived in a relatively poor neighborhood of Tegucigalpa only two years ago. If so, the incredible luxury of his mansion is hard to justify. But since the victim is the taxpayer and Hondutel’s clients, how can restitution be made?
Wow Nony, that’s a disturbing thought…that he’ll be cleared of all charges and end up richer!
Yes this is exciting, Jennifer, as I said to Gringa, this is totally unexpected. I hope that corruptos in general will now realize no one is sacred.
I hope this is not too personal, but why were you in an allanimiento????
Sounds like an interesting story…
Hey Ranty,
I was in an allanamiento early this year because Chimirri suspected the company I was working for of being corrupt and generating “grey traffic”. So, they came in and said that they had captured us “in fraganti” commiting a crime. They didn’t have a court order, like they did today against Chimirri. They took all our servers and equipment.
They have yet to prove we did anything wrong, but we are still fighting to get our computers and equipment back.
One of the distric attorneys (fiscales) wanted to take the company TV with him. I was so furious I stuttered at him, “How is a television supposed to generate phone calls?” and stormed out of the room. He apparently wanted to steal it. After what I said though, they left it alone.
Marcelo is just a plain fool who thought he could take on people with lot’s at stake with this whole Hondutel, gray traffic corruption in Honduras. I believe he had nothing to do with recording these conversations, Conversations that if you listen to them, there are just conversations! Wow! what a spy uh? It’s a 3rd world country so those this stuff suprise anybody? Evidence of what?? I admit he has been an idiot, the personal page on Hi5, the pictures, the way he handled his business, however the real reason he will end up in jail is because he pissed off the wrong people!! He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, see, in this country to be successful you have to see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil, however the last one is not very popular down there! See folks I would be willing to bet he was dicovering some nasty stuff on powerful people, of course he had his hands in the dough too don’t get me wrong. But he was to ignorant to know what to do with all this stuff! All this stuff was maybe way over his head, Hondutel is a cash cow! And what he says about people wanting to privetise her is not to farfetched!
Long time buddy of Marcelo Mel will wash his hands like pilatus on this one.Let the small fish pay and let the real big fish keep swimming on corrupt money! Marcelo you should have asked Mel to give you a different position, maybe minister of turism, embasador to kuwait, but not Hondutel man! What were you thinking?? The Sopranos is chicken shit compared to what has happened all these years in that institution! It’s all a big mafia dude! Everybody with lots of money and power in Honduras have interest in this thing people! You think they were goin to let Marcelo Montana mess all this up for them, you got another thing coming!
I bet that the next guy they place as head honcho of Hondutel will do a fantastic Job! He will shut up, let people steal, and everything will be honkydory again for the real big fish!
Anons, you’re scaring me a bit! I agree that the phone calls aren’t very spy-ish. And, it is sad that Chimirri’s supposed “friends” have now abandoned him.
I hope the new manager of Hondutel will remove the people who make Hondutel a political nightmare. A silent, quiescent person would be worse! We need a modern and fearless guy who will face the faceless. But that’s a very dangerous thing to do in this country.
He should have left Valentin’s son keep stealing money, he should have kept his mouth shut and let the kattan’s steal money. He pissed off all the congressmen on his party. The opposition party is having a feast with all this because they want to be in power again and do what the liberal party is doing too, steal! Powerful people want Hondutel banckrupt so the can buy her and then make millions for themselfs! Marcelo was way over his head, you were in a no win situation partner!! Now they are railroading you out, you became an “inconvinience” to some powerful people, you people think that this is about pedro recording juan taking about nothing, you have got to be smarter than that! Good luck amigo, may God be on your side.
Hello everyone,
I’m new at this blog, as a matter of fact I just found it this morning though it’s rather interesting…
I’ve been reading about this whole nonsense going on… in the newspapers, media.. and there’s no way that one sole person can know the whole truth about what’s going on…someone knows, that’s for sure.
I spoke with a friend about this situation and he told me stuff that even confused me more! He is no government official, nor anything related though he has certain knowledge of what is going on, I’M NOT CLAIMING THIS AS OFFICIAL though he says that there are certain millionaires that DON’T want any other competition other than what is already out there.. for example the present Wireless companies, they won’t let ANY NEW NETWORKS in on the market. WHY? b/c it’s a CASHCOW! As I understand, it was Chimirri who contributed to the launching of Hondutel’s OWN NEW CELLPHONE NETWORK (Tegucel) just to name one and they are looking to launch it nationally against aaaall these millionaires who are against any NEW cellphone networks entering the market…. he may be using this to cover it all up, but whatever he did, this as a good thing for the people, at the rate of 1 LEMPIRA por minuto.
I’m not an advocate of whatever bad things Chimirri has done, nor do I even know the guy…am not at his defense whatsoever, I’m just saying that it’s possible that the media in Honduras is quite confusing, or moreso not SELF PROPELLED, meaning that they are “handled” by leading millionaires who want to post and confuse the people of Honduras and the international media, I wish that they would be more responsible before they publish any news, and NOT necessarily what the corrupt millionaires want/need out there in the people’s minds! I’m not angry, just a little upset about the wrongdoings that these millionaires do! They should give the people of Honduras a chance and quit squeezing the few pennies they got out of their pockets.
Another thing.. has anyone NOT HEARD OF VONAGE? ok.. does anyone UNDERSTAND how Vonage works?
ok so here goes, through Vonage you can basically buy a local phone number for anywhere in the US and a VOIP device which you connect to your High Speed Internet connection and you get CHEAP PHONE CALLS ALL DAY LONG…
that’s all great and dandy, and it’s legal in the US. Now my question is.. why is this not legal in Honduras? Is it b/c it’s such a small country and it has ONE NATIONAL PHONE COMPANY NAMED HONDUTEL? Are these millionaires holding it back? could someone explain this to me please?
Thanks!
Hi Jackal, your comment deserves its own blog post, so read today’s post!
I don’t want to defend Chimirri or his morality.However, it is odd that only when Hondutel launched its mobile network the press started to pay attention to his actions, especially the written and televised media who benefit from the ads of Millicom and American Mobile. Another thing that is quite annoying is that this break-in at Chimirri’s house occured the very day after Hondutel’s board of directors approved the creation of the third mobile operation “Ceibacel” and the expansion of the two previous operations in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. Let’s not forget that also media mogul Jose Rafael Ferrari has been quite interested in launching a mobile operator himself, so I only can imagine that the government’s actions and not Chimirri’s personal ones are the cause of his downfall. Unfortunately the message for any potential upcoming CEO of Hondutel has been sent quite clearly, don’t mess with the other mobile operators ir we’ll screw you up, don’t do anything and you can steal from Hondutel as much as you want to.
Thanks anon, the whole situation reeks…I wonder what’s really behind it.