Fifa: Jack Warner diverted funds for Haiti
Fifa's Jack Warner accused of diverting funds intended for Haiti earthquake victims
US justice department papers seen by BBC allege that US$750,000 for victims of 2010 quake went to bank account controlled by former Fifa vice-president
Former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner at a political rally in Marabella, Trinidad and Tobago.
Jack Warner, the embattled former Fifa vice-president at the centre of corruption charges, faces a new slew of allegations as more details emerge of payments that were reportedly diverted to bank accounts he controlled.
In papers drawn up by US investigators and seen by the BBC, Warner is accused of diverting US$750,000 in emergency funds donated by Fifa and the Korean Football Association intended for victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The BBC reports US investigators alleging the money went to accounts controlled by Warner, at “Warner’s direction” for his “personal use”.
Warner was arrested last month in Trinidad at the request of US authorities, and faces extradition on charges of corruption and money laundering.
In 2012, the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation (TTFF) claimed that funds donated for Haiti were paid into a bank account controlled by Warner. It said the money from Fifa ($250,000) and the South Korean FA ($500,000) was paid into a TTFF account it claimed only Warner – a special adviser to the federation – controlled.
At the time, Warner said the allegations were a conspiracy: “I have nothing to answer to anybody. Who wants to make allegations, make allegations.” Fifa froze its funding to the TTFF.
Bahamas : 3 Haitian arrested for human trafficking
The Department of Immigration of the Bahamas arrested three Haitians and a Bahamian, accused of involvement in the arrival of two boats, of 49 undocumented Haitians on the coast of the island of Eleuthera, last week.
In a statement, the Department of Immigration said that charges will be filed against the four suspects for violation of the Immigration Act, which prohibits the protection of undocumented migrants. The three Haitian defendants, who have a permit to work in the Bahamas, were arrested after three illegal immigrants were found and arrested in their home in the village of Bannerman "Many other people had left the house and escaped the arrest," said the department.
The Bahamian arrested resident of Eleuthera, will be accused of having hosted five undocumented Haitian nationals in his house.
The captains of both vessels have also been identified and will be charged with illegal entry of immigrants, whose two of whom died.
This is one of many cases of illegal arrests of Haitian smugglers, who regularly arrive in the archipelago, without proper documents, which led the Bahamian authorities to enforce immigration policies increasingly more stringent for nationals from Haiti.
Recall that on 1 November 2014 entered into force a new law on immigration which created international controversy http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12477-haiti-politic-the-hunt-for-illegals-is-open-to-the-bahamas.html This law states that the Bahamas will not accept applications for work visas from persons residing illegally in the country and that immigrants living in the Bahamas should always have on them, among other things, the passport of their homeland. http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12709-haiti-politic-bahamas-haiti-the-regularization-problem-of-illegal-migrants-unsolved.html
Note that the Bahamas with a population of about 377,000 inhabitants, would have almost 70,000 immigrants living on its territory, most illegal immigrants, including Haitian 20.000 to 50.000 (Source International Organization for Migration - IOM).
Haiti cancels contracts with beleaguered Dominican senator
Santo Domingo.- Haiti’s government has canceled the contract to build the headquarters of two departments with the companies HOM ROFI, AD owned by Dominican senator Felix Bautista, and assigned the works to a Taiwanese company, Haiti local media report.
They also quote Planning and Foreign Cooperation minister Jose Yves Germain as saying that the transfer came aftter slow progress by the Dominican companies. He said the works must be finished within five months, or before president Michel J. Martelly leaves office.
Germain said the work started in 2011 with the Dominican contractors, with funding of US$16 million from Taiwan.
The companies owned by Bautista, who faces charges of embezzlement and malfeasance in the Dominican Republic, also built five sports arenas worth between?? US$2.0 million and US$3.0 million each.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio wants 'free, fair' elections for Haiti
Written by Samuel Maxime on 10 June 2015.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (sentinel.ht) - A proposed amendment by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, if passed, could put U.S. aid to Haiti in jeopardy if "any attempts to disqualify candidates for political office in Haiti for political reasons," are found in the electoral process.
Document
Document said to be proposed resolution for Assessing Progress in Haiti Act
He is one of the potential nominees for president of the Republican party and he is proposing an amendment for the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act of 2014, that was passed by the House of Representatives and Senate but has been waiting a signature from President Barack Obama.
If the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which has been under fire for its inconsistent decision to disqualify former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe from elections, were to maintain this position in its appeal, the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act of 2014, if enacted, would require the U.S. Secretary of State to report on the attempts or eventuality of eliminations from the for political process for political reasons.
Such a report could compromise the aid a Republican-held congress would appropriate to Haiti, one would believe.
Clean up on Clinton foreign policy continues
Haiti went from more than 5,000 elected officials nationwide in 2010 to 11 today, effectively, a totalitarian regime. It wasn't the earthquake. Many point to Obama's first-term Clinton foreign policy as the problem.
The world's attention remains on the earthquake relief debacle. Billary's Katrina, it has become. But the deterioration of democracy in a poor country in this hemisphere has Clinton's prints on it, if one would consult a Senate report, opposition protests and political observers in Haiti.
Congressional Republicans, as well as some Democrats, are demanding more accountability and oversight.The Haiti dossier was a conflict between the interests of the Clintons and interests of the American people.
Haiti would have a lot of impact in the 2016 elections but Republicans would have to employ compassion in order to seal the deal with the issue. This is a challenge for the GOP.
Lamothe and 11 others barred from Haiti presidential race
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
Former Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe who lobbied politicians in Washington, pleaded with the diaspora in Miami and launched a campaign in Port-au-Prince and on social media to be a contender in Haiti’s upcoming presidential elections, had his hopes officially dashed Friday by the country’s elections panel.
Lamothe and six other former government ministers have all been blocked from running for president, according to the final presidential list by the nine-member Provisional Electoral Council and obtained by the Miami Herald.
Though electoral officials did not list the reasons for their rejection, they all have one thing in common: they lack a décharge or discharge certificate from parliament certifying that they properly managed state funds during their tenure.
In the end, elections officials qualified 58 of the 70 people who registered to run in the Oct. 25 balloting to replace President Michel Martelly, who by law is barred from seeking consecutive five-year presidential terms.
Growing conservation push in north Haiti focuses on restoring coastlines, overfished waters
CARACOL, Haiti – Only little fish are pulled from the coastal waters off Haiti.
In this overfished area of northern Haiti, fishermen who want a catch big enough for a meal say they must travel three hours in a boat to the Dominican Republic, where they scour the reefs of a national park and risk arrest, beatings or even death.
"Going over there is the only way we can feed our families," fisherman Wilfrid Desarme said in Caracol, where the sandy beach is lined with small wooden boats that replaced similar ones seized or torched by Dominican sailors who caught Haitians poaching there with rusty spear guns and fine-mesh nets.
Over the decades, impoverished Haiti has gained a reputation as an environmental wasteland. The country has only about 2 to 3 percent of its original forest cover, most of it lost because trees were cut down to make charcoal for cooking fuel. Its waters are severely overfished, leaving only small, young fish to catch. Coral reefs are clogged with silt washing into the sea from denuded hills.
Now, Haitian conservationist Jean Wiener is leading a homegrown campaign to protect the country's northern coastal areas, including barrier reefs and threatened mangrove forests that serve as crucial spawning grounds and nurseries for fish and crustaceans.
Wiener, who studied biology in the United States before returning to Haiti in 1989, saw his profile rise this year when he was among six global activists who received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Foundation award. The $175,000 prize awarded by an international jury was a big boost for his nonprofit organization, which has six staff members.
In recent years, the 50-year-old activist has successfully fought to create the country's first protected marine areas, including Three Bays National Park. The roughly 80,000-hectare (19,700-acre) zone carved last year out of northern Haiti's overfished Caracol, Limonade and Fort Liberte Bays includes as much as 20 percent of the country's remaining mangroves, which are now illegal to chop down.
But no one enforces the legislation Wiener helped push through in 2013 to protect the mangroves, and he acknowledges there's a long way to go before the new protected marine areas become more than lines on a map. Like many sea sanctuaries around the globe, Haiti's new protected zones are "paper parks," without adequate resources to enforce restrictions.
"For our marine environment, right now at least, there's no law enforcement whatsoever," Wiener says.
Still, scientists have high hopes that the sprawling Three Bays park can eventually help rebuild severely depleted fish stocks and make Haiti's coastal ecosystems more resilient to a warming planet with rising seas and acidifying oceans. There's been plenty of research showing fishermen eventually haul in more fish when a patrolled marine reserve nearby provides a safe haven for fish to grow.
Haiti's new park "contains the most extensive and healthiest coral reefs and other marine and coastal habitats in the country," says Maxene Atis, conservation coordinator for The Nature Conservancy's central Caribbean program.
If the government agrees to provide a few rangers to patrol Three Bays, Wiener says his Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity could secure the funding to pay their salaries.
The stakes for Haiti's environment are especially high in the coastal areas. Wiener's group last year prepared the first comprehensive report on Haiti's remaining mangroves and found destruction was "extreme" because the trees were being used by people dependent on charcoal for cooking.
To help ease pressures for charcoal and fuel wood, another nonprofit group called Carbon Roots International works with dozens of Haitians at an eight-acre property near Three Bays to manufacture briquettes made primarily from sugarcane husks. These charcoal briquettes are cheaper than the traditional ones made from mangrove and other types of wood and allow farmers to make money off their agricultural waste.
Haiti's northern coast suffers from the harvesting of coral offshore for construction material and soil erosion that deposits smothering silt along the coastal shelf. It's also threatened by effluent from the slowly expanding Caracol Industrial Park that was built after southern Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake with more than $124 million in U.S. investments and is anchored by a South Korean textile company.
In the face of the diminishing fish populations, Wiener says he is developing alternative livelihoods for local fishermen. Right now he's looking just at honey production, but before the end of the year he hopes to introduce seaweed and oyster production as options.
For now, Haiti has one booming fishing sector left. Near the mouth of a river in Limonade, villagers gather by the hundreds nightly to hunt translucent "glass eels," using scoops fashioned from mosquito nets. The baby eels, which look like noodles with tiny dark eyes, are not eaten in Haiti, but sent by brokers to Asia, where they are fed a high-protein diet to speed their growth. Haiti's unsustainable export market for the globally endangered eels started in 2012, kick-started by Korean businessmen at the industrial park.
Scientists say that overfishing of the tiny eels mirrors that of sea cucumbers, a lumpy invertebrate that is consumed in China as an aphrodisiac. Starting about a decade ago, Haitians overfished and exported that species so quickly in the country's waters that local fishermen say they haven't seen it in years.
Despite the many challenges, Wiener is optimistic because he believes most Haitians share a strong interest in rebuilding the country's ravaged environment.
"We can't be constantly counting on others to do things for us because a lot of (non-Haitian) people don't have a vested interest in seeing anything change whereas we really do," he said.
At Caracol's fishing village, 60-year-old fisherman Jacqueson Cadet hopes for an easier life for his grandchildren.
"We must make changes or else we won't have any fish or any fishermen left here," Cadet says wistfully, looking at the lapping waves. "Nobody wants fishing to be an old dream."