US Special Advocate Blames DEA in Failed Haiti Drug Trafficking Case | national news

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The US Drug Enforcement Administrations office in Haiti mismanaged a major investigation into a Colombian ship loaded with hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and heroin, including aiding and paying Haitian officials to destroy some evidence of drugs, according to a report of the US special advice released on Friday.

The DEA’s botched procedures were highlighted by the Office of Special Counsel in a letter to President Joe Biden in which pharmaceutical agencies have the findings and report on the 2015 drug trafficking case involving the vessel MV Manzanares were found to be unreasonable.

(S) given that the U.S. government is devoting resources to the DEA to operate in Haiti, it behooves the agency to be as effective as possible in its mission to disrupt the flow of illegal drugs to the United States, a writes Special Advocate Henry Kerner, who has been tasked with assessing the wrongdoing allegations of two former DEA agents in Haiti.

Kerner criticized the agency’s claim that, because it has a limited role in promoting seaport safety, it is not responsible for the effectiveness of its work in Haiti, calling the claim unreasonable. He also said the DEA did not adequately explain its drug destruction in the Manzanares investigation and that the agency did not explain why there was a significant delay in severing ties with an official. Haitian corruption.

The lawyers’ report is based on two former DEA agents formerly stationed in Port-au-Prince who filed denunciation complaints.

In his letter to the president, Kerner urged the DEA to take a closer look at its operations in Haiti and implement measures to improve its effectiveness. In a press release issued Friday, Kerner said the allegations by DEA whistleblowers were serious allegations.

Although fortuitous, the long-awaited special advisers report was released just weeks after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mose on July 7.

It remains to be seen how the DEA, whose counter-narcotics unit in Haiti reports to the agency’s Caribbean office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, plans to implement corrective measures. The special counsels report clearly articulates serious shortcomings in the way DEA supervisory agents in Haiti investigated the Manzanares case, a botched investigation that was exposed by the Herald in 2018.

A spokesperson for the US Office of Special Counsel said an unreasonable conclusion is quite rare in disclosure cases.

The decision itself does not initiate corrective action, although the OSC is alerting both the president and congressional adjudication committees to its finding, which could initiate further oversight, spokesman Zachary Kurz said. .

Not only did the DEA help the Haitian National Police destroy some of the drug evidence and pay them $ 1,500 for the costs, but most of the cocaine and heroin smuggled onto the ship at a port. private maritime services near Port-au-Prince have disappeared. The 700 to 800 kilograms of cocaine and 300 kilograms of heroin hidden in bags of sugar in the ship’s hull had an estimated market value of $ 100 million in the United States, authorities said.

Perhaps most importantly, due to the DEA’s mismanagement of the Manzanares case, federal prosecutors in Miami were only able to initiate criminal proceedings against a low-level longshoreman who was involved in the investigation into drugs. The longshoreman cooperated with federal prosecutors, was sentenced to one year in prison, and then was granted asylum in the United States after establishing that he feared persecution in his home country.

Apart from the conviction of Gregory George, whose life had been threatened several times while in prison in Haiti, no other suspect in the Manzanares investigation has been brought to justice in Miami. The case, the statute of limitations having expired, is effectively closed contrary to the DEA’s assertions in the letter from special counsel to the president.

One of the DEA whistleblowers who filed the complaint against the agency said it was a conflict of interest that the agency itself was given the initial task by the then attorney general. , Jeff Sessions, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. More importantly, the former DEA agent, who had worked for the agency for 23 years and is now retired in New York City, said the Manzanares affair revealed how his bosses in Haiti failed successfully countered the influx of drugs across the island to the United States. .

It was a cover-up, Keith McNichols told the Herald in an interview. One of my big complaints was about all the millions of dollars of American taxpayer dollars that were wasted in the fight against drug trafficking in Haiti.

McNichols’ lawyers also echoed his point, saying the DEA’s own investigation into the failed Manzanares case is nothing more than a buddy system where superiors protect their own.

We have no confidence that the DEA will do whatever it takes to get justice, said attorney Tom Devine, who represented McNichols with attorney Samantha Feinstein at the Government Accountability Project in Washington, DC. let’s hope some lawmakers take it seriously enough to put pressure on (them).

In their review of the whistleblowers’ allegations, the DEA’s chief lawyer failed to substantiate them, dismissing almost all of their allegations, including allegations that agents in Haiti had a corrupt relationship with a commander of the team. fight against narcotics by the national police. The government’s special counsel’s office was so disappointed with the DEA’s initial investigation that it asked the agency to submit a follow-up report.

The report indicates that the DEA fired the Haitian commander of the security forces of this unit (against drugs) in 2018 after the current country attaché in Port-au-Prince demanded his dismissal due to problems of corruption, the DEA found, according to the letter of the special advisers to the President. The DEA did not find sufficient evidence to support whistleblowers’ claims that the DEA refused resources for the Manzanares investigation.

2021 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2021 Tribune Content Agency.

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