Say an investor wants to make money. An investor wants to do it with the least amount of difficulty possible, in whatever country they want to invest in. In Honduras, unfortunately, investors already know that they need to earmark 30% of the overhead of any business for what we would call “getting things done”, 30% that they will have to pay a local “corruption operator” to pay secretaries, judges, prosecutors, journalists, and public officials.
Whom would I speak with if I were an investor, a Canadian investor, and I wanted to follow an ethical code of behaviour in doing business? Well, it would be desirable to speak to the leaders of the community where the investor is going to do the project, with those organizations that represent the community. Then I would ask the National Anti-Corruption Council, which, in my opinion, in the past five years has been led adequately, and which has sufficient knowledge of how the public and private sectors are operating vis-à-vis business in Honduras. Before putting my money down, I would ask the international commission against corruption, the OAS commission, which has opened 126 lines of investigation into public and private corruption in our country, if I wanted to follow a corporate social responsibility code and an ethics code. If I wanted to opt for direct corruption, then I would simply devote 30% of my direct costs to corruption. Regrettably, that is what's done most often.
For example, the company that caused the death of the mother of Bertha Isabel, who is with us by video conference, received an environmental permit issued by the vice-minister for natural resources, who did not follow the procedures for environmental licensing, and who, in fact, is now subject to a criminal proceeding because of it. I'm not sure if this person went to jail or not. For the past year I've been outside of Honduras, so I don't know if he went to jail or not, but he mishandled the environmental permit to that company, which was responsible for the death of Berta Cáceres. How much did he receive? Well, that's the question that we don't have an answer for, but it was something for sure. He did receive something from the company, I'm certain, in order to approve an environmental licence under the circumstances in which he did—that is, without consulting the community that is by the river, without foreseeing the impact the reservoir would have in San Antonio de Chuchepeque, the closest town. He did not follow the required procedures. As Felipe said, after the coup, a number of laws were reformed, including the general environmental law, in order to facilitate—really, it was not to facilitate—these non-transparent procedures in granting environmental concessions.