The sentence is for smuggling more than six tonnes of cocaine into the United States and for threatening a DEA agent posted in Belize.

Well, Hertular appealed the case and the details of his discussions with the DEA agent were produced in court. Now, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeal Second Circuit has been posted on the internet. It's news tonight because it makes allegations of ministerial collusion in drug trafficking in 2003.

Specifically, it implicates former Police Minister Ralph Fonseca. Federal Agents Raymond Kelly and Vince Williams attested that in December of 2003 Hertular told them that - and we quote from the court judgment here:

"Since 1987, he (Hertular) had been a member of the 'Fonseca organization,' a group involved in drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States and Europe."

The court document further states that:

"Hertular implicated a former Belizean prime minister and police commissioner in the organization and identified the Belize Alliance Bank as the entity used for money laundering."

The court document goes unto state that quote: Hertular also played the agents a tape recording of an intercepted phone conversation between Agent Kelly and a confidential DEA informant regarding Ralph Fonseca, a senior Belizean government official with whom Hertular was suspected of trafficking drugs.

According to the court document Hertular also threatened the agents, saying that "the agents better "protect" themselves and "watch [their] backs, because the Fonseca organization would hire hit men from Colombia or Mexico to take [the agents] out." ?

That's the gist of the revelations in the quote lengthy judgment.

Now is it just wild talk and crazy concoctions from a man who was trying to get an immunity deal from those same Federal Agents, or is there something to it?

Well, speaking with us by phone this evening Fonseca said it is quote: "obviously nonsense and foolishness" and that during his time in office, he was aware "of cranks carrying around such stories because he was the one extraditing them."