Money transfer tax lawsuit : allegations against Haitian rulers

BY THE HAITIAN TIMES APR. 01, 2022

The Haitian Times

The lawsuit against Haiti’s last three presidents and remittances and phone companies — Celestin v. Caribbean Air Mail — has been winding its way through the courts since 2018. In 2021, a district court dismissed it on the grounds that United States courts cannot render another country’s laws invalid. On Thursday, a federal panel of three judges weighed in, saying the case may proceed.

The Haitian Times dug through a https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f0d10ad9-f15c-4d8f-821a-1fbf3891ed1e/1/hilite/">29-page ruling on the lawsuit from the United States Court of Appeals and the Celestin v. Martelly detailed lawsuit to provide a recap. Below are 15 major allegations and legal developments to know about based on that review.

1.    Defendants— Haitian government officials and multinational corporations—conspired to fix the  prices of remittances and telephone calls from the United States to Haiti. The defendants allegedly agreed to produce official instruments, including a Presidential Order and two Circulars of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH) to disguise their agreement as a tax for domestic education programs.

2.    Martelly allegedly orchestrated a far-reaching price-fixing agreement with the Corporate Defendants before becoming President in 2011. The  “mechanism” for implementing the agreement was a Presidential Order and two Circulars of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti that Martelly would issue after taking office.

3.    The Presidential Order set a “floor price for all incoming international call[s]” at $0.23 per minute and required that $0.05 per minute be “turned over to the Government.” Similarly, the Circulars “memorialized” Defendants’ agreement to add a $1.50 fee to remittances of food and money sent to Haiti from certain countries, including the United States.

4.    Under both the Presidential Order and the Circulars, the Corporate Defendants and Natcom collected these surcharges as a condition of eligibility to provide services.

5.    Martelly represented to the public that these policies would raise revenues  to support a Haitian compulsory education program. But in fact, Plaintiffs say, no such program existed.

6.    Rather, just months after publication of the Presidential Order, “it was discovered that [$26] million in the new National Fund for Education was missing.” Plaintiffs assert that each Corporate Defendant retained a portion of the fees it collected rather than transmitting the full amount to the Haitian treasury. 

7.    Martelly, and successors Jocelerme Privert and Jovenel Moise, during their respective terms, profited personally from the fees as well, according to the suit. 

8.    For example, according to one accusation, Martelly used the transfer tax money for a beach house.

9.    Furthermore, the Presidential Order and Circulars ran afoul of Haitian law because “only the parliament may raise taxes and fees for the benefit of the state.” As part of the scheme, Plaintiffs allege, Defendants told customers that these fees were in fact collected pursuant to a “lawful tax” for education.

10.A district court in 2021 granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss all claims based on (1) the act of state doctrine and (2) in the alternative, as to some Defendants, forum non conveniens.

11.A federal panel of judges on March 31 chose to REVERSE the district court’s dismissal of the antitrust claim under the act of state doctrine and VACATE the dismissal of the fifteen state-law claims for reanalysis under the proper standard. it also REMANDED the case for further proceedings.

12.We may give the Presidential Order and Circulars their full purported legal effect and still conclude that Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged illegal price-fixing under the Sherman Act.

13.Plaintiffs’ antitrust claim depends not on “whether the alleged acts are valid, but whether they occurred” in a way that gives rise to liability. 

14.The plaintiffs are listed as: Odilon S. Celestin, Widimir Romelien, Goldie Lamothe-Alexandre, Vincent Marazita

Local airline, charters in Haiti suspend flights after protesters burn airplane

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Updated March 29, 2022

Domestic and charter airline operators have temporarily halted local flight service in Haiti after protesters in the southwestern city of Les Cayes on Tuesday tore apart and then burned a plane used by a Florida-based charity.

The eight-seat Piper Navajo Chieftain aircraft belonged to Agape Flights, which is based in Venice, Florida, a spokeswoman for Agape Flights told the Miami Herald.

“For 42 years we’ve been flying to Haiti and we have weekly mission flights carrying cargo, mail and humanitarian aid to missionary families throughout Haiti,” she said. “It is devastating but we are just thankful that the team is safe.”

On its web page the group announced that for the safety of its affiliated missionaries and staff, this week’s flight has been canceled.

The violence unfolded during a day of protests in Haiti against rising insecurity with demonstrators calling for an end to kidnappings. While mostly peaceful in the capital, they turned violent in Les Cayes, where protesters gained access to the airport and attacked the plane, which had arrived Sunday with a team of humanitarian aid workers helping in the region’s recovery from last August’s devastating magnitude 7.2 earthquake that left over 2,000 dead.

Haiti police said that at least one protester died and five others were injured, including four police officers who were attacked with rocks. Police spokesman Garry Desrosiers confirmed that a plane in the southeastern city of Jacmel was also burned Tuesday, but it was “not the same situation as Les Cayes.” The plane had crash-landed in November under mysterious circumstances and was abandoned. 

“It had already been vandalized and a group of people threw something in it,” he said.

In response to the incident, the country’s leading domestic carrier, Sunrise Airways, temporarily halted all flights to Les Cayes. Soon after, Mission Aviation Fellowship announced it was grounding all charter flights throughout Haiti for Wednesday.

Sunrise Airways Director Philippe Bayard told the Miami Herald that for now only flights to Les Cayes will be canceled. 

“We’ve stopped the flights and are seeing what kind of security they are implementing at the airport because we cannot put at risk the people who are working with us, the passengers or the airplane,” Bayard said. “I know they are doing an evaluation to see how much damage they did at the airport and after that, we will make a decision.”

He called Tuesday’s violence in Les Cayes “sad” and “unacceptable.”

“It’s a missionary group that has come to do good in a country and they burned the airplane. Is this something that is acceptable?” Bayard said. “Regardless of the reasons why people were protesting, is the destruction they did here justifiable? It’s something that is lamentable.”

Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Haiti’s 1987 Constitution. Amid growing discontent over a surge in kidnappings and gang criminality, Haitians have taken to circulating a petition demanding that Prime Minister Ariel Henry do something to address the problems. Condemning the incident in Les Cayes, Henry said in a tweet that he has ordered authorities to track down those behind the violence.

Les Cayes now becomes the latest big city to be without scheduled air service in Haiti, where armed gangs have made traveling the country’s national roads to large cities outside of the capital a dangerous undertaking. 

Since June, more than 20,000 Haitians have been forced from their homes in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant at the southern entrance of the capital, which serves as the gateway to five different regional areas including those struck by the August 14 earthquake. Gangs are attacking public buses and carjacking motorists and holding them for ransom.

The violence on the roads has led to full domestic flights and an increased demand for private charters. In Les Cayes, demonstrators have accused airline owners and the government of profiteering from the insecurity in Martissant.

“A business cannot exist on a road that is closed and an area that is isolated,” said Bayard. “Insecurity with chaos and disorder has never been good for anyone.”

Bayard said Les Cayes has long been in need of regular air service, and after starting it a year ago, demand began to increase after the earthquake. The air service also allowed aid to pour in quickly after the earthquake. While customers come for air travel because of the insecurity in Martissant, he said, there are also fewer people traveling because they don’t want to go to Port-au-Prince because of the security issues.

Richard Hervé Fourcand, a former senator who lives in Les Cayes and provided his personal aircraft to take injured earthquake victims to safety, said “activists went too far” on Tuesday.

He called the protesters’ argument against the local air carriers “exaggerated.” He acknowledged that the situation in Martissant is increasingly becoming unbearable and affecting the recovery of the south. “Everything is expensive,” he said. “You have to pay four gangs just to get one container through.”

Agape Flights, the spokeswoman said, is focused on getting their team members safely back home rather than future plans.

This story was originally published  March 29, 2022 8:28 PM.

Humanitarian missions continue to Haiti despite plane set on fire by protestors

Staff was not injured in the incident

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Staff from Agape, the Sarasota-based missionary group is speaking out after one of their planes helping with humanitarian aid in Haiti was burned by protesters.

"You're instantly hurt and devastated and as the day goes on you realize, you know what, no one on our team was harmed in all this," said Abby Duncan the communications manager for Agape.

Duncan said their group flew into Haiti on Sunday to do earthquake relief, and when the fire happened they were helping rebuild a church in a remote village.

They weren't injured in the fire, but the organization is working to bring them back.

"The aircraft is a tool. It's a very useful tool. It's our ministry but we're so thankful that our team is safe," said Duncan. "The aircraft can be replaced but lives cannot."

Agape has been flying to Haiti for 42 years and takes weekly flights to Haiti, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and serves about 300 missionary families.

Haiti remains a nation in turmoil.

This incident follows peaceful protests in other parts of the nation calling for the government to address gang violence and kidnappings.

Agape staff said demonstrators may have mistaken their aircraft for a politician's plane.

"When they see a private aircraft, they think that those are people profiting from their misfortune and Agape's plane happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, they didn't realize it was a nonprofit's plane," said Duncan.

"I was shocked, we've been in that airport many times last fall after the earthquake hit, it's getting unsettling," said Joe Karavensh the president/pilot of Missionary Flights International (MFI), a Chrisitan-based non-profit organization. "I actually flew yesterday (Tuesday) and I hadn't heard about it until I landed here."

MFI was founded over 50 years ago and provides transportation for about 550 different Christian organizations, mostly working in Haiti but also working in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

Karavensh said they are in and out of Haiti twice a week from the

Treasure Coast bringing in about 3,000-4,000 people a year doing short-term mission projects as well as a quarter-million pounds of baggage and cargo to help with churches, hospitals, clinics, schools and more.

"We don't want to risk having any incidents happening. Even if we're on the flight and we fly over the airport, we generally do a visual looking down where we come around and land and if it looks like there's a crowd of people or something that's not normal, we'll bypass it. That's our precautions right now on our plane," said Karavensh.

WPTV reporter Joel Lopez asked Karavensh:

"Your volunteers, were there any concerns after this news especially with the flight being so close to when the events happened?"

"We contacted all the ones that are traveling tomorrow and, at this point, I understand that they're all aware of what happened but they're all still ready to go," said Karavensh.

WPTV reporter Joel Lopez asked Karavensh:

"Your volunteers, were there any concerns after this news especially with the flight being so close to when the events happened?"

"We contacted all the ones that are traveling tomorrow and, at this point, I understand that they're all aware of what happened but they're all still ready to go," said Karavensh.

The non-profit said some 10 volunteers and supplies are flying into Haiti Thursday morning.

 

Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada announces judicial appointment in province of Québec

World

29 Mar 2022

The Honourable David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointment under the judicial application process established in 2016. This process emphasizes transparency, merit, and the diversity of the Canadian population, and will continue to ensure the appointment of jurists who meet the highest standards of excellence and integrity.

Marie-Hélène Dubé, Senior Partner at Goldwater, Dubé in Montréal, is appointed a puisne Judge of the Superior Court of Quebec for the district of Montréal. Justice Dubé replaces Justice J. Mainville (Montréal), who elected to become a supernumerary judge effective November 21, 2021.

Quote

“I wish Justice Dubé every success in her new role. I know she will serve the people of Québec well as a member of the Superior Court.”

-The Hon. David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Biography

Justice Marie-Hélène Dubé graduated from the Université de Montréal and was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1991.

Justice Dubé began her career with the firm Goldwater, Dubé, where she gained a great deal of experience in family and civil litigation, including cases involving constitutional law, which led to frequent appearances before the Superior Court of Quebec and the Quebec Court of Appeal and, on two occasions, before the Supreme Court of Canada. She also practised as a mediator in family law matters. She has been actively involved with the Bar of Quebec, where she was part of a group of experts in family law, and in with the Bar of Montreal as a member of the committee on ethno-cultural diversity.

Justice Dubé’s commitment to the legal community has also been evident in her many efforts in mentoring and training young lawyers. In this capacity, she recently collaborated with the École du Barreau du Québec to develop training on the right to equality in legal practice, as well as with the Quebec section of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers. Justice Dubé has also presented at conferences and written various articles, notably as co-author of the section on the maintenance obligations of former spouses in the publication JurisClasseur – Personnes et Famille. In the course of her career, she has provided pro bono legal services to improve access to justice in the context of matters of public interest.

Justice Dubé is fluent in French, English, and Haitian Creole. She raised her three children in a Montreal neighbourhood known for its great social mix.

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