Canadian 'Porn King' Accused of Looting Honduran Cultural Artifacts
by Sam Woolston and Mario Saiz
11 Dec 2024
Over 3,500 archaeological items have been recovered from the house of a controversial Canadian property magnate in Honduras, adding to a growing list of criminal accusations against the “Porn King” that include money laundering, fraud, and land usurpation.
The artifacts were found just outside the city of Trujillo, on the country’s northern coast, in the former home of Randy Roy Jorgensen, a Canadian property developer who bought up swathes of the Honduran coastline in a series of dubious property deals starting in 2007. Jorgensen was the previous owner of Adults Only Video, a multimillion-dollar pornographic video chain store that earned Jorgensen his moniker, the “King of Porn.”
Jorgensen used his profits to buy, subdivide, and sell the Honduran coast, marketing plots to Canadian retirees. However, the developments were exclusively on lands claimed by Honduras’ Indigenous Garífuna population, who hold ancestral land titles. Garífuna groups have long submitted legal complaints of usurpation against Jorgensen’s developments, though Honduran authorities frequently ignored them.
Honduras’ Attorney General seized 233 of Jorgensen’s properties, including the house where the artifacts were found, in April after complaints from Canadian investors. In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office accused Jorgensen of money laundering and of defrauding Canadians, but provided few other details. The prices at which Jorgensen bought and sold properties were also misreported in public declarations, according to the AG. Jorgensen has not been arrested or charged in relation to the property seizures. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The artifacts at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Jorgensen were discovered by members of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña – OFRANEH), a nonprofit that represents the Indigenous Garífuna population.
More:
https://insightcrime.org/news/canadian-porn-king-accused-of-looting-honduran-cultural-artifacts/
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October 23, 2015
Randy Jorgensen, the Canadian “Porn King”, To Appear in Honduran Courts for Illegal Possession of Garifuna Lands for Tourist Projects
Randy Jorgensen will appear in Honduran courts under charges of usurpation, related to the illegal possession of Afro-indigenous, Garifuna lands in Trujillo, Honduras. Jorgensen, also known as the Canadian Porn King, is a major investor in various tourist projects in the Trujillo Bay area along Honduras’ northern Caribbean coast, including the ‘Banana Coast’ cruise ship terminal, and various gated-community projects. Charges against Jorgensen involve the illegal purchase and on-going use of land within a community land title belonging to the Garifuna communities of Cristales and Rio Negro, located in Trujillo Bay.
Photo caption: The Banana Coast cruise ship terminal, in the Rio Negro neighborhood in Trujillo. Local residents no longer have free access to the beach.
The legal hearing will take place on November 13 and the charges come after years of investigation of the illegal land sales. In June of this year, an arrest warrant for Jorgensen was issued by the Honduran Attorney General’s office. The majority of the alleged “land sales” in Rio Negro were made under threat of expropriation and repression, given the tense political environment following the June 2009 military coup in Honduras.
The Garifuna are an Afro-indigenous people that have lived for over 200 years along the Caribbean coast of Honduras, on lands now threatened by the foreign and national tourism industry. In the Trujillo region, Garifuna communities are also being evicted from their ancestral lands amid the possible construction of an Economic Development and Employment Zone (ZEDE) or Model City. Jorgensen’s investments are seen as the seed of a future ZEDE or parts of what could grow into a free trade, special development zone in the region.
Slow Tourism-Related Ethnocide
The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH by its Spanish acronym) has been publicly condemning tourism-related repression and illegal land sales for years. In December 2011, Rio Negro and Cristales, accompanied by OFRANEH, “filed a lawsuit demanding absolute nullity of several fraudulent land sales made in favor of Randy Roy Jorgensen. … Jorgensen, in the midst of the Honduran political tragedy in 2009, managed to suddenly obtain environmental licenses to build in an area declared a buffer zone of the Capiro and Calentura National Park.” Regarding the recent charges, OFRANEH released a statement that can be found here.
Photo caption: The ruins of a house in Rio Negro, with one of the last houses standing in the backdrop at the location where the Banana Coast cruise ship terminal is now located. Picture taken in 2011.
The piece of land that Jorgensen is illegally occupying consists of over 76 manzanas [approximately 132 acres] within the Rio Negro land title dating back to 1901. Upon obtaining the land, Jorgensen has since built the ‘Banana Coast’ cruise ship terminal that received over 50 international cruise ships last season. The Garifuna community of Rio Negro has largely been ‘disappeared’ by the project and the few houses remaining are regularly affected by severe flooding caused by the design and construction of the cruise ship terminal adjacent to their houses. Residents of Rio Negro and surrounding Garifuna communities have also lost access to the beach, a lifeline for the Garifuna that rely on fishing for local consumption.
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Photo caption: Randy Jorgensen (left) with Ramon Lobo (center) and former President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo (right). Photo from Life Vision Development.
More:
https://www.aquiabajo.com/blog/2016/1/1/randy-jorgensen-the-canadian-porn-king-to-appear-in-honduran-courts-for-illegal-possession-of-garifuna-lands-for-tourist-projects
Porfirio Lobo Sosa, on the right side of the photo with his father and Jorgensen, was the first elected president after the coup in 2009. His son was imprisoned for drug trafficking, "Pepe's" brother, drug trafficking, as well, and "Pepe," his wife, his son owned companies which acted as tax havens, murders of journalists, members of previous President Zelaya's party, misused money, murders of peasants on land owned by Honduran oligarchs, etc., etc.
More about Lobo in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_Lobo_Sosa
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