U.S. Indicts Members of Powerful Honduran Family

Adding to the tempest of anti-corruption cases making their way through Honduras, the United States authorities indicted members of one of the nation’s most elite families Wednesday, charging a former vice president and his son with laundering drug money.

The indictment of Jaime Rolando Rosenthal, a vice president of Honduras in the 1980s and one of its wealthiest men, came as a shock in a country where wealth and political power breed impunity. Also charged was his son, Yani Rosenthal, a former cabinet minister, and his nephew Yankel Rosenthal, a soccer club manager and former minister of investment who was arrested Tuesday evening in Miami. A fourth man, Andrés Acosta García, was also charged.

The Rosenthal family is among the richest in Honduras, with a business enterprise that sprawls across the news media, financial services, telecommunications and real estate interests. The family is accused of laundering money for some of the largest Central American drug syndicates through accounts in the United States, according to the Treasury Department, which also announced sanctions against the three family members.

Some analysts suggested that in charging the Rosenthals, the United States intended to warn the narrow cadre of powerful families who control much of Honduras. The nation is among the most violent in the world and poorest in Latin America. It serves as the transit point for drugs that are smuggled from South America through Mexico to the United States.

“This is a shot across all the elite’s bows in Honduras,” said Steven Dudley, co-director of the research group InSight Crime, who has interviewed Mr. Rosenthal and researched the family.

The move comes in the midst of widespread corruption scandals plaguing the Honduran government, including allegations of a $200 million scheme to defraud the social security system that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters into the streets. The plot involved awarding health care contracts to phantom companies.

Further fueling the outrage was an admission by President Juan Orlando Hernández that some of the siphoned money was used to finance his 2013 campaign for office. Amid the uproar, many Hondurans began calling for the president’s ouster.

Calls for an independent external group to help root out corruption also began to grow, drawing inspiration from Guatemala, which has played host to an effective United Nations-backed agency whose work has led to the arrests of dozens of high-ranking officials and recently forced Guatemala’s president to resign.

But instead of creating something akin to the commission working in Guatemala, which has investigative authority, the Organization of American States announced an initiative to assist Honduras that many fear will not be able to go as far.

“The internationals will supervise and advise the attorney general in Honduras, but that could mean just about anything and doesn’t give them the solid legal ground to take on politically charged cases,” said Eric L. Olson, associate director of the Latin American Program at the Wilson Center in Washington.