13091: Chamberlain posts (news item): Head of Haitian investment scheme arrested (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The director of Haiti's
largest pyramid investment scheme was arrested as he tried to leave the
country for the Dominican Republic, Haitian police said on Friday.
     David Chery, head of the Coeurs Unis (United Hearts) cooperative
investment group was arrested with his mother, brother and maid at the
Dominican border town of Dajabon on Thursday, Haitian National Police
spokesman Jean-Dady Simeon said.
     "Mr. Chery has been moved back to Port-au-Prince via helicopter and
will be imprisoned in the National Penitentiary pending trial," Simeon
said.
     Chery had been banned from leaving the country prior to answering a
summons to appear before Haiti's state prosecutor.
     Coeurs Unis was known for its omnipresent television spots where a
laughing man wearing a peasant hat would proclaim clients would receive 12
percent interest a month on investments.
     It purchased scores of taxis, buses and plots of real estate during
its 10-month existence, but went out of business at the end of July, taking
with it the savings of hundreds of poor Haitians and becoming the latest
casualty in a series of pyramid schemes.
     Building on Haiti's traditional system of legitimate peasant and
merchant cooperatives, the investing phenomenon sprang up in the past two
years with inflated promises of huge interest payments.
     Initially, poor and middle-class Haitians flocked to the cooperative
investment groups as a way to boost their meager savings. Haiti is the
poorest country in the Americas with per- capita average income of about
$400 a year.
     But many cooperatives ceased making interest payments this summer and
some abruptly closed their doors.
     Some local economists speculated the rise of the cooperatives was
related to efforts by Haiti's narcotics traffickers to launder drug
proceeds by buying mass- transportation concerns and hotels, blending
tainted money with the funds of legitimate investors.