22644: (Hermantin)Miami Herald-Report: Haitian ex-cop helped move cocaine (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Jul. 07, 2004

HAITI


Report: Haitian ex-cop helped move cocaine

Expelled from the Dominican Republic, an ex-Haitian police chief is charged
in Miami with helping to smuggle cocaine through Port-au-Prince airport.

BY JAY WEAVER

jweaver@herald.com


A former Haitian National Police commander in charge of law enforcement at
the Port-au-Prince airport shook down drug traffickers for tens of thousands
of dollars and let them fly cocaine-filled planes to the United States, a
criminal complaint alleges.

Romaine Lestin, expelled Friday from the Dominican Republic on a smuggling
conspiracy charge, appeared Tuesday before a Miami magistrate judge without
a lawyer and did not respond to the charges.

Lestin, 35, told Magistrate Judge Robert L. Dube that he needed a
court-appointed lawyer. He said he had only $500 in American money and
$10,000 in Haitian money -- about U.S. $1,333 -- in bank accounts.

He is being held without bail, at least until a bond hearing Friday, and is
to be arraigned July 20.

Lestin is the latest suspect grabbed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in its investigation into narcotics activity in the
government of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Among those arrested in the widening probe: Aristide's former presidential
security guard, a former pro-Aristide senator and four senior Haitian
National Police officers.

Lestin had three police positions -- commander of the SWAT unit, police
chief of the community of Tabre, a suburb of the capital, and police chief
of the airport from January 2001 to February 2004. It was in that third role
that Lestin sought kickbacks from Colombian and Haitian drug traffickers,
according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

One government drug informant, who has been identified in federal court as
convicted trafficker Jacques Ketant, told the DEA that Lestin used his
''position at the Port-au-Prince airport to facilitate the flow of drugs out
of Haiti,'' the criminal affidavit said.

ALLEGED ACTIVITIES

Ketant told agents, for instance, that he and another drug trafficker paid
$100,000 to a former director of the Haitian National Police, identified as
Jude Perrin, to move a shipment of 240 kilos to the United States, the
affidavit said. Ketant said that after the drugs were shipped, Lestin
''complained'' he not received his cut.

Another drug informant, identified in federal court as Aristide's former
presidential security chief, Oriel Jean, implicated Lestin in the National
Haitian Police seizure of $450,000 in drug proceeds from Carlos Ovalle, an
admitted Colombian trafficker, at the Port-au-Prince airport in the summer
of 2002, according to the affidavit.

KEPT $150,000

Jean told DEA agents that senior police officials -- including Lestin --
negotiated the return of $300,000 to Ovalle, the affidavit said. But Jean
said the officials kept the remaining $150,000 for themselves.

The DEA accelerated its arrests of former Haitian police and officials after
Aristide's ouster, though the probe was a product of a five-year crackdown.


    email this       print this

_________________________________________________________________
FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now!
http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/