More arrests — and suspects being sought — in shocking killing of Haitian president Moïse
Haitian police announced late Wednesday the arrest of two more people, one with ties to Florida and another with a drug-linked past, in a blossoming probe into the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
A week after Moïse’s shocking killing, which also left his wife Martine wounded and whisked to South Florida for treatment, Haiti’s interim national police chief, Léon Charles, assembled journalists to update them on his investigation and renew a pledge to answer the question of who is behind the murder and who bankrolled it.
One of the new arrests was of Gilbert Dragon, a soft-spoken former rebel leader who played a key role in the bloody 2004 coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Dragon was second-in-command at the time to Guy Philippe, the coup leader who was arrested in 2014 just days before he was going to be sworn in as a senator, and flown to the United States by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on drug charges. Philippe later pleaded guilty to money laundering.
Also among the recently arrested is Reynaldo Corvington, who had his own security company in Haiti called Corvington Courier & Security Services. Its homepage boasts Integrity-Independence-Confidence.
Public records and social media show that Corvington has family in South Florida, although his company is not registered in the Sunshine State.
In a presentation that identified the two newly arrested men, who brought to 23 the number of suspects in custody, Charles identified the Doral-based firm CTU Security and said its Venezuelan-émigré owner Antonio Intriago is now a person of interest. Intriago has disappeared, not answering his phones or knocks on his door.
Charles also named Walter Vientemilla, who heads a South Florida lender called Worldwide Capital Lending Group, as a person of interest. The Miami Herald and the McClatchy Washington Bureau tried repeatedly to reach Vientemilla, leaving messages with his employees that he did not answer. Charles alleged that a Worldwide Capital Lending meeting served as a forum to plan the assassination.
Seven arrest warrants have been issued and dozens of interrogations have taken place involving members of the president’s security team and those in custody, police said. On Wednesday, the head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace (USGPN) failed to show up in court to answer questions about the assassination from an investigative judge. In a letter to the judge, Dimitri Hérard said he could not appear because he is being held in isolation by the inspector general of the police, the equivalent of internal affairs.
Haitian police said four police officials fall into this category, including Hérard.
Five Haitians are now in custody along with 18 Colombian security men who were arrested in the hours after the July 7 assassination at the president’s private residence in the Pelerin 5 neighborhood of metropolitan Port-au-Prince. All of the Colombians, Charles said Wednesday, are “ex-military.”
“We are advancing,” he said about the investigation, which has now been joined by a team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that arrived in the country. “We are retracing what happened.”
In Colombia, the radio station Caracol on Wednesday broadcast what it said were messages sent over Whatsapp between the Colombians who were being recruited. One man who said he helped arrange the work for them, Carlos Arturo García Zamora, insisted they were duped. The men thought they were contracted to provide security, he said, sharing a Whatsapp message to all of them.
“Gentlemen, the proposal is as follows: ‘There is an American company that needs special forces personnel, commandos with experience, to realize a job in Central America. The pay is between $2,500 and $3,500 month,” read the message broadcast by Caracol, which went on to say 100 men were needed initially but it could grow to 500 and could involve urban combat.
Importantly, the message said the operation would be “under the protection of the American government. They are going to equip us and they are going to pay us our salaries.”
When the assault began on the Haitian president’s residences, invaders shouted it was a DEA operation, something strongly denied by the DEA and other U.S. agencies.
Charles Wednesday said one of the men sought by Haitian police, Joseph Felix Badio, an ex-government functionary, is the one who fabricated the DEA logo used by the group. Also a hat emblazoned with DEA was found in the home of another Haitian American in custody, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, who has ties to South Florida going back more than 20 years.
The Miami Herald and McClatchy reached out via social media to García, who hails from Tuluá and said he had 21 years experience in the Colombian army. He did not respond to requests for an interview.
Charles, Haiti’s interim police chief, alleges that the contract soldiers entered Haiti via Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic on June 6, and that James Solages, until April a maintenance director at a Lantana senior-living center, was one of the people who led coordination efforts. Charles showed a photograph of what he said was a meeting of Worldwide Capital Lending Group, which Solages, 35, attended along with Sanon, the Haitian doctor from South Florida arrested in connection with the assassination. Intriago was also shown to be at that meeting.
Aside from those two South Florida men, West Palm Beach resident James G. Vincent, 55, surrendered to Haitian authorities, saying he worked with the Colombians as a translator and was a former DEA informant. In an unusual move, the DEA issued a statement saying one of the Haitian arrests involved a former informant.
Charles said late Wednesday that Haitians provided vehicles, homes, arms, even a fake logo of the DEA as part of the plot that involved at least three individuals with drug trafficking ties, an ex-Haitian senator, a former anti-corruption official and a bankrupt Haitian doctor, Sanon, who lives in South Florida.
Police have now issued wanted posters for those four individuals and have searched 10 buildings and homes that they believe may have been used in the plot, or housed some of the suspects.
Still unanswered is a motive for the gruesome assassination and an explanation as to why none of the members of the president’s security detail were killed or injured in the overnight-hours attack.
“The police will not stop,” Charles said, adding that there are others they are looking for. “The police are mobilized 24-7.”
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 9:28 PM with the headline "More arrests — and suspects being sought — in shocking killing of Haitian president Moïse."
