18480: Labrom: Haitian gold in 1914

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From voyageslumiere@haitelonline.com

In the article from Action Aid there was a statement which said that
"The United States Government has repeatedly intervened in Haiti. U.S.
marines robbed $500,000 from the National Bank of Haiti in 1915. These
stolen monies were then deposited in the National City Bank--now part of
the trillion dollar Citibank octopus".

Well up until two days ago I had always heard that and believed it. BUT
in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Volume 9 No. 1 in Spring 2003, there
is an article entitled "Haiti and the Hemispheric Imperative to Invest:
the Bulletin of the Pan American Union' by Jeffrey Sommers. The article
is very interesting, but especially with the statement he makes as
follows "By 1914 the relationship between American bankers in New York
and the United States government became so close that the Vice president
of the National Bank of Haiti, the New Yorker Henry H Wehrhane,
requested that the US military forcibly remove US$110,000 in Haitian
gold from Port-au-Prince.  The American government complied with
Wehrhane's request to "protect" the bank's investment in Haiti.
American miliraty forces removed the gold and took it to New York on
board a US Navy vessel (the US later decided to take $500,000 in Haitian
government gold which was returned a number of years later with
interest)". His footnote quotes Ibid. 1914, 365.

So perhaps there are some good researchers on the list who can verify or
deny this so as to keep the record straight!!!

Jacqui Labrom

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