On May 5, 2026, a Honduran businessman named Lenir Pérez wrote a $100,000 check to the Salazar Victory Committee, the joint fundraising committee that raises money for Maria Elvira Salazar and her party. Federal Election Commission records show how it was split: $7,000 to her campaign, Salazar for Congress; $5,000 to her leadership PAC, Freedom Force PAC; and $88,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
That makes Pérez the biggest donor of the cycle to Salazar, the Republican who represents Miami, as the Miami Herald reports. Only one other donor matches him: billionaire financier J.W. Childs, who wrote the same committee the same $100,000 check in April 2025, FEC records show.
Here's who he is: a man charged by Honduran prosecutors with environmental crimes, over a mine that local people fought for a decade — and at least five of those people were shot dead.
The mine
In 2011, Honduras made about 250,000 acres of forest in the north of the country a protected national park. It was named for Carlos Escaleras Mejía, an environmental activist killed in 1997.
Two years later, Pérez asked for permission to dig for iron oxide inside the park. That December, Honduran lawmakers redrew the park's borders so he could. His company built an open-pit mine and a processing plant called Los Pinares.
The communities nearby fought it with petitions, protests and clashes with police. The Herald reports that at least five leaders of the movement against the mine were shot and killed between 2019 and 2024.
The last was Juan López, a town councilman and an aide to the local Catholic bishop. Earlier in 2024 he had led the push that forced Honduras's Congress to put the park back to its original borders. On the night of September 14, 2024, he was shot after leaving church in Tocoa. Pope Francis, the United Nations and the human rights arm of the Organization of American States condemned the killing.
Ten days later, Honduran prosecutors charged Pérez and others with breaking environmental laws at Los Pinares from about 2013 to May 2021, by digging beyond the areas the permits allowed. According to the charging documents, the operation illegally exploited the park's minerals and forest. That case is still open.
To be clear about what is and isn't known: there is no formal link between Pérez and the killings, and he denies any wrongdoing. His company says it runs the mine responsibly and brings jobs to a poor region. But some local environmental groups have called for him to be charged in López's murder. And on May 12, 2026 — the same week Pérez wrote his checks to Salazar — the former mayor of the area around the mine was arrested over López's killing.
The Florida estate the FBI raided
That same week, Pérez posted a photo of himself with Salazar at his $10 million horse estate in Wellington, Florida. The president of Honduras's National Congress, Tomás Zambrano, posted photos with Salazar at what appeared to be the same event.
According to congressional Democrats, the FBI raided that estate in April 2023. They believe the raid was part of a federal probe into an American steel company that was allegedly doing business with Los Pinares. News cameras showed FBI agents and Palm Beach County deputies at the property.
In 2025, three Democratic lawmakers wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the killings. They said Pérez and his wife, Ana Facussé, have "repeatedly been accused by local communities and both national and international human rights organizations of corruption, involvement in violent land conflicts, unlawful influence over the judicial system, and ties to drug trafficking."
Why Salazar's job makes this worse
This isn't a donor to just any member of Congress. Salazar chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that covers the Western Hemisphere — the panel that shapes American policy toward Honduras. The Herald reports she has used that seat to wade into Honduran politics.
Pérez built his business empire with government contracts under former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was later sent to the United States and sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. Trump pardoned Hernández last year. Pérez has also bragged about meetings with State Department officials in recent months.
So the man charged over Los Pinares wrote a six-figure check to the fundraising committee of the chair of the subcommittee that handles Honduras, hosted her at his home at what appeared to be the same event the leader of the Honduran Congress attended — and nobody has said what they talked about.
The Herald asked. It sent questions to Salazar's office and her communications director, and called and texted her cell phone. She didn't answer. Neither Pérez nor Zambrano answered questions about what was discussed, or why Pérez put so much money into her race.
A pattern
Salazar's Latin America work has raised questions before. We've reported on how she blocked subpoenas over a Venezuela oil deal and how she made 67 stock trades this year while sitting on the subcommittee that writes the rules for the stock market.
What the record shows
Lenir Pérez wrote Maria Elvira Salazar's joint fundraising committee a $100,000 check in May, making him tied for her biggest donor of the cycle, while he faces Honduran charges of illegally mining a protected national park where at least five people who opposed his mine were shot dead. Salazar chairs the House subcommittee that oversees policy toward Honduras, appeared with him at his Florida estate the same week, and won't tell the Miami Herald what they discussed.
Source
Salazar's biggest donor accused in Honduras of environmental crimes, corruption — Shirsho Dasgupta and Claire Heddles, Miami Herald, October 23, 2026
