Lenir Pérez, the Honduran businessman who is Rep. María Elvira Salazar's largest campaign donor this election cycle, has been charged in Honduras with environmental crimes tied to a mining project inside a protected national park where at least eight people who opposed the mine have been killed. Pérez has given more than $100,000 to Salazar's campaign and related political committees this year while facing the Honduran charges, which remain ongoing.
Honduran prosecutors accuse Pérez of illegal exploitation of mineral and forest resources, according to the Miami Herald. The Herald reports that Pérez and others allegedly operated beyond the permitted areas of the Los Pinares project from around 2013 to May 2021. Charging documents, as reported by the Miami Herald, accuse Pérez of overseeing the Los Pinares mine and ore processing plant, which allegedly exploited mineral and forest resources illegally. Pérez maintains his innocence and has denied wrongdoing, per the Herald's reporting.
Prosecutors presented evidence alleging road construction, a waste-rock dump and tree cutting at the site without the required operating permits or an environmental license, Criterio.hn reports. The Miami Herald reported that prosecutors charged Pérez on September 24, 2024, ten days after Juan Antonio López was killed; Honduras's special environmental prosecutor's office indicted him that year, according to the Herald.
A Donor With Deep Republican Ties
Pérez contributed $105,000 to Salazar's joint fundraising and leadership political committees this year and an additional $7,000 to her candidate committee, the Miami Herald reports. The only other donor matching Pérez's roughly $112,000 total to Salazar this cycle is J.W. Childs, per the same account. Pérez also hosted Salazar at his $10 million Wellington equestrian estate, according to the Herald.
The Herald says Pérez made donations to Salazar on May 5 and later that week touted a visit to his Wellington estate. Pérez also made an $88,000 contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee and a $5,000 contribution to the Freedom Force PAC, which Salazar leads. Pérez's reported $200,000 in Republican giving compares to the $95,000 that fellow Honduran figure Abelardo De la Espriella has donated to Republican campaigns since 2018, Contra Corriente notes.
The FBI raided Pérez's Wellington estate in April 2023 while he was under investigation by the agency in the United States, according to Contra Corriente and the Herald's reporting. Congressional Democrats believe the raid was part of a federal probe into an American steel company allegedly doing business with Los Pinares, per the Herald. Neither Pérez nor Tomás Zambrano, president of Honduras's National Congress and a member of the National Party, answered questions about their discussions or Pérez's political contributions, the Herald reports. Salazar, who chairs the U.S. House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, did not respond to the Herald's questions about her conversations with Pérez and Zambrano at Pérez's home. Pérez has touted recent meetings with U.S. State Department officials, per the same reporting.
A Corporate Link to a U.S. Steel Giant
Inversiones Los Pinares is owned by Pérez and Ana Facussé, according to The Conversation. Nucor Corporation partnered with the pair on the Los Pinares mining project in 2015, according to the International Women's Media Foundation, with a Nucor subsidiary, Nucor Trading, agreeing to purchase raw materials produced by the mine. Nucor said it exited its equity investment in the venture in October 2019 as violence and safety concerns at the Guapinol site escalated, the foundation's reporting states.
Pérez arrived in Tocoa in 2002 and went on to found Grupo EMCO Holding, a multinational conglomerate spanning mining, airports, energy and logistics, according to the Miami Herald. In 2013, Pérez requested permission to explore part of the park for iron oxide, and Honduran lawmakers redrew the park's boundaries that December to allow him to proceed, the Herald reports. Pérez and others allegedly operated beyond the permitted areas of Los Pinares from around 2013 to May 2021, per the same reporting. Local communities and environmental groups have opposed the open-pit iron oxide excavation at the site, and Pérez's company has argued its operations are environmentally responsible and bring jobs to an underdeveloped region.
A Trail of Killings Tied to the Mine
At least five local environmental activists and a Catholic human rights leader have been shot dead while opposing the mine since 2019, according to the Miami Herald. Juan Antonio López, a municipal councilman and aide to the local Catholic bishop who led a movement that restored the park's original boundaries and denied license extensions, was shot dead as he left church in Tocoa on September 14, 2024, per the Herald's reporting. Pope Francis, the United Nations and the Organization of American States' human rights arm condemned the killing and called for an independent investigation, the Herald notes.
Honduras's Public Prosecutor's Office said it arrested former Tocoa mayor Adán Fúnez Martínez, along with Juan Ángel Ramos Gallegos and Héctor Eduardo Méndez, as alleged participants in López's killing, and also accused the three of criminal association affecting other fundamental rights, according to the Honduras Public Prosecutor's Office. A former regional mayor was arrested in May 2026 for alleged involvement in the killing, the Miami Herald reports, though the trial of the alleged gunmen has since been postponed by prosecutors until January 2027, according to America Magazine. The Herald reports that Pérez has no formal connection to the killings of the activists.
Three Democratic lawmakers wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in September 2025 about the killings, describing the deaths as part of what they called a broader pattern of corruption and impunity in cases linked to powerful corporate and political interests, according to the Miami Herald. The same lawmakers said Pérez and Ana Facussé had been accused of corruption, violent land conflicts, unlawful judicial influence and drug-trafficking ties, and urged the State Department to help protect activists and pressure Honduras to safeguard the park, per the Herald's reporting.
A Pattern Beyond One Mine
Honduras recorded 18 defender killings in 2023, and three activists opposing an iron-oxide mine near Guapinol were shot dead between January and June that year. Honduras topped the list of per-capita killings of environmental defenders worldwide over the preceding decade, according to Amnesty International, citing Global Witness data.
Honduras's government designated roughly 250,000 acres of northern forest as a protected national park in 2011, named for environmentalist Carlos Escaleras Mejía, who was killed in 1997, according to the Miami Herald. Honduras's National Congress approved a 2024 decree reversing previous state actions that had opened the park to mining. Environmentalists have expressed concern that the decree may not be enforced against Pérez under the National Party government, per the Herald's reporting.
Pérez's case unfolds against the backdrop of broader scrutiny of Honduran political corruption in Washington. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in the United States in 2024 to 45 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, according to the Miami Herald, before President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025. Salazar is campaigning against Democrat Eliott Rodriguez for Florida's 27th Congressional District, which encompasses Coral Gables, South Miami, Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay, the Herald reports. Pérez's environmental crimes case in Honduras remains ongoing.
