The Prosecutor against Corruption, Nilson Salgado, said the FHIS investigation seeks to determine “if there were irregularities that constitute a criminal offense around an arbitrator’s award, which was submitted to the FHIS, with a U.S. company called DRC, which sued the State of Honduras initially for three million Lempiras.”

The company, based in Alabama, entered into a series of public works contracts with the FHIS, which were funded from a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was made after Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Honduras in late October 1998.

“Honduras, through the Attorney, is investigating whether the arbitration award, which was submitted to the FHIS, is in agreement with regular fees by Honduran law,” reiterated Salgado.

“We will review the legality of the proceedings. The judicial proceedings, arbitration, and actions of State officials regarding this award” he added.

Interestingly enough, DRC has been fighting an ongoing suit by the U.S. government over the USAID work performed in Honduras. The work was contracted to help Hurricane Mitch recovery efforts in Honduras, but the lawsuit states that DRC “engaged in a well- coordinated scheme to mislead and defraud” federal agencies. The 2004 lawsuit (still being contested in D.C. federal courts) alleges that DRC misrepresented its personal and equipment assets, improperly subcontracted most of the work, and submitted false invoices totaling more than $12.6 million, of which DRC pocketed $5.2 million after paying subcontractors. The United States federal prosecutors are seeking to recoup triple that amount in damages plus other costs.

This is enough to question the motive behind the original lawsuit filed by DRC against Honduras. One cannot help but wonder after reading the following article:

“Honduras, Nicaragua, and Sierra Leone are just some of the nations vulture funds have attacked.”

“At present there are no laws that cap the amount of profit that a vulture fund can collect through litigating against poor countries to collect defaulted debt, nor are there regulatory structures that disclose who they are or how much they paid for this debt that was previously considered worthless…” Click the link for information on How Poor Countries are Robbed through Litigation.

More information on DRC (from Wikipedia) can be found here.