#5105: Haitian Times on Kidnapping of Amos Jeannot (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>

 
Amos Jeannot
Fonkoze Employee is Kidnapped after
Office is Robbed

By Brian Stevens
Haitian Times Staff

MIAMI - In yet another display of the growing state of
lawlessness that plagues Haiti, 10 men dressed in police
uniforms calmly walked into the Port-au-Prince office of
a non-profit bank last week, robbing the institution and
kidnapping one of its most trusted and longtime
employees.

"This is the kind of situation where you literally cannot
trust anyone," said Anne H. Hastings, project director of
Fonkoze, a non-profit alternative bank founded by an
activist Haitian priest almost five years ago to make
micro-credit loans to poor merchants. Witnesses said 10
men wearing "impeccable" Haitian National Police uniforms
and rank insignia, launched the brazen mid-afternoon heist
and kidnapping last Wednesday by entering the bank's
Avenue John Paul II office and ordering employees
and customers to lie on the floor.

Heavily armed, the hold-up team forced Fonkoze's business
manager to open and empty a safe filled with cash and
checks from the bank's more than 11,000 accounts, the
majority of which are held by peasant organizations,
women's collectives, cooperatives, credit unions, street
vendors, and religious communities. Fonkoze officials
were tight lipped about the amount of cash lost in the
robbery, saying only that the thieves "left with a small
amount of money."

But perhaps most devastating, said Hastings, was the
kidnapping of Fonkoze courier Amos Jeannot, beaten
and dragged off by the thieves as they fled the bank.
Jeannot, 29, married and the father of a 3-month-old
son, has not been heard of since the Wednesday
robbery.

The Haitian Times
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