-Caveat Lector-
>From InsightMag.Com
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Vol. 15, No. 47 -- December 20, 1999
Published Date November 24, 1999, in Washington, D.C.
www.insightmag.com
An Island Nation Stormed by Drugs
By Martin Arostegui
The Dominican Republic's drug czar says U.S. ambivalence is letting traffickers
make a narcostate of his country, turning it into a hub for the export of
illegal narcotics.
Last year Marino Vinicio Castillo, the president of the Dominican Republic's
National Council on Drugs, stood beside U.S. officials in Santo Domingo and
announced the seizure of three drug-transporting planes owned by Mexican
kingpin Luis Horacio Cano, a man indicted on 57 counts of narcotrafficking and
convicted in U.S. federal court. The Dominican Republic's drug czar was acting
at the request of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. He revealed
that the seized aircraft had been transshipping cocaine through that country
and flying back crates full of dollars to be laundered into local investments.
Castillo called for "the immediate extradition" of Cano's alleged Dominican
collaborators, Tito Hernandez and Edmond Elias.
. . . . "This marks a great step in the collaboration between our two
governments in the fight against drugs," declared U.S. Consul General Edward
Cubbison, joining Castillo at the microphone. "It's a warning to all those who
practice the crime that they have no place to hide."
. . . . Today, however, those words ring hollow. Castillo tells Insight that he
fears his country is being allowed to drift into narcostatehood, accusing the
White House of undermining his efforts to fight drug trafficking. Dominican
President Leonel Fernandez -- an ally of the Clintons who is reportedly helping
the first lady with the sizable Dominican immigrant vote in her New York Senate
bid -- has failed to hand over Hernandez or Elias, both of whom are reported to
be financial contributors to his ruling Dominican Liberation Party, or PLD.
. . . . Castillo also points to a pattern of official negligence that he says
is helping drug cartels penetrate the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti.
While Clinton officials congratulated themselves on last month's roundup of
some recycled remnants of Colombia's Medellín cartel, they remained silent
while the Dominican government sold off major state properties to known
criminal interests.
. . . . "It's a fatal blow to the war on drugs" says Castillo, reporting that
Dominican Airlines was sold to a Venezuelan company, Atlantic Inc., which
Castillo says has at least two directors involved in narcotrafficking. Chinese
gangs moving money from Hong Kong also were using the government's
privatization drive to try to gain control of key port and maritime facilities,
which may be part of Beijing's stealth move into this hemisphere. Increasingly
alarmed, the
outspoken Castillo requested the government entity handling the sell-offs, the
Commission for the Reform of Public Enterprises, or CRPE, provide details on
two foreign companies bidding for the Dominican Republic's largest agricultural
estates located near the Haitian border.
. . . . The rival bidders for the three vast sugar plantations were identified
as Incauca of Cali, Colombia, and Zucarmex of Mexico. During a mid-August
meeting with DEA officials to discuss sensitive investigations into rapidly
expanding narcotics activities in Haiti, Castillo passed the information to the
agency, asking it to run a check on the two companies. On Aug. 18, he received
an urgent call from the U.S. State Department's chief DEA liaison officer
informing him that important drug connections had been traced to both firms.
. . . . "Incauca has among its board members Rodrigo Lora Garces, Ardila Lule
and Carlos Alberto Bertran Ardila --all of whom are recognized as important
individuals in drug operations in Colombia [and] Zucarmex appeared in the
central computer of an important drug cartel whose premises were raided by
authorities," according to a printout provided to Castillo by U.S. officials.
. . . . Highly informed leftist sources in Santo Domingo with access to
internal government information tell Insight that Zucarmex has operated as a
front for Mexican drug-cartel companies linked to Cano and former Mexican
president Salinas de Gortari -- a fugitive who, the sources say, now lives in
Cuba under a false identity. Antidrug officials confirm that Cano repeatedly
flew to Cuba in his jet with Elias and Hernandez to invest in joint ventures
with Castro, whose drug links date back to the early eighties. Fernandez
established friendly relations with Cuba last year, enthusiastically inviting
Castro on a state visit -- an action that made the Cuban dictator feel so
confident he gloatingly told a Havana rally, "Clinton is incapable of
destabilizing me."
. . . . But those were the bidders. "To turn over all that property to the drug
mafia would be national suicide," Castillo warned Fernandez, advising him to
halt the auction of the sugar plantations. He also reports meeting with CRPE
director Isa Conde to inform him that the National Commission on Drugs opposes
selling the sugar plantations to either of the two bidders. Believing the
matter was settled and that an official U.S. State Department report would be
sent to the Dominican government, he left for an extended trip abroad. Upon his
return, Castillo was horrified to discover that all three sugar estates had
been sold to Zucarmex, also called Impulsaria Azucarera del Nordeste.
. . . . "No official reports were received [from the U.S. government] linking
the companies to drugs," Conde nervously tells Insight, refusing to answer any
further questions and abruptly terminating the interview in his office. He
explained with embarrassment that "such clearances are managed at the
presidential level."
. . . . "The United States cannot be serious about the war on drugs," concludes
Castillo, interviewed in his private law office in Santo Domingo and closely
guarded by security agents with pump-action shotguns and automat
ic rifles. "By denying their own intelligence reports, they are allowing the narcos to
create a state within a state in the Dominican Republic." By controlling a tract
equivalent in size to two entire provinces of the Dom
inican Republic, traffickers now will be able to move their merchandise in and out
with impunity -- as in Colombia -- building secret air strips, camouflaged storage
depots, refining facilities and even drug plantations.
"We are a very small and vulnerable nation," the Dominican drug czar says with
exasperation.
. . . . "Located directly between Colombia and Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic is
strategically placed to be a center for narcotrafficking," explains Gen. Luis Alberto
Humeau Hidalgo, director of the National Departme
nt for Drug Control, or DNCD. "Furthermore, one must consider our extensive national
ties with the United States, which has more direct-flight connections to the Dominican
Republic than with any other Latin American count
ry, and 1 million Dominican immigrants living in American urban areas." He estimates
that 15 percent of narcotics entering the United States now moves through the
Dominican Republic.
. . . . With a Bible and rosary displayed on a table behind his desk, the DNCD chief
also points to an increasing number of drug routes through neighboring Haiti.
According to official estimates, two-thirds of U.S.-bound
drugs entering the Dominican Republic now are coming through the porous, mountainous
border region. "New Colombian groups, including the new and increasingly powerful
Santa Marta cartel, are establishing an important base
of operations in southwest Haiti where there is no infrastructure or police controls
against massive quantities of drugs arriving by boat and plane," says Hidalgo.
. . . . The extent of Haitian official complicity in drug trafficking dramatically was
illustrated in October by a raid on the home of the secretary-general of former
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party, whic
h uncovered 245 kilos [539 pounds] of cocaine. Several of Aristide's officials
resigned following that drug bust.
. . . . "The government is increasingly allowing foreign investors to operate here
without any restrictions," claims Hidalgo, who fears that criminal control over vast
sections of Dominican territory "would certainly prov
ide an important complement to Haitian drug centers and greatly expand trafficking
routes." While conceding that "there is a growing narcotrend along this area of the
Caribbean," U.S. Embassy political officer Kevin O'Rei
lly says that antinarcotics assistance to the Dominican Republic has dropped from a
high of $750,000 in 1998 to $625,000 this year.
. . . . Defending the record of Fernandez on the issue of extraditions, U.S.
diplomatic officials claim that "there is no other country in the Americas which has
extradited as many people to the United States as the Domin
ican Republic." The embassy says that of 32 individuals on the U.S. Justice Department
list, nine have been handed over since August 1997. This is highly suspicious. Hidalgo
puts the number at seven, pointing out that mos
t operated at the level of distribution and syndicate enforcement. "They are small
fry," claims a Dominican congressional deputy, insisting that "pressures to obtain the
extraditions of major culprits are not at the level
they should be."
. . . . That's him," says a local investigative reporter who is staking out Tito
Hernandez in the second-largest Dominican city, Santiago de los Caballeros. He is
pointing to the blue, bulletproofed Range Rover with smoke
d windows pulling out of the Casino Gran Almirante, which allegedly was built with
Mexican kingpin Cano's drug money. Together with his partner, Edmond Elias, Hernandez
reportedly also laundered funds into massive new cas
inos now dominating Santo Domingo's once-picturesque seafront.
. . . . Along with ownership of their baseball team, Las Aguilas, the drug syndicate
also sponsors the pop group Las Aguichicas -- girls dressed in hot-pants baseball
suits and chosen more for their cleavage than musical
talent, who strip to the accompaniment of merengue tunes and are available for private
parties with friends of their boss.
. . . . U.S. federal prosecutors formally submitted arrest requests for Hernandez and
Elias two years ago. But the two men remain untouchable, commuting routinely between
offices in their pink Chinese-styled casino near S
antiago's booming town center and luxury villas hidden behind a high wall in the
exclusive district of La Esmeralda, where Cano also kept a residence. The Dominican
associates were interrogated on orders from Justice Mini
ster Abel Rodriguez del Orbe following the 1996 U.S. drug busts that netted Cano. But
they have not been questioned again, despite protests by Pedro Justo Castellano, the
director of the anticorruption unit who conducted
the initial investigations and since has resigned.
. . . . "Cano was brought into the Dominican Republic by Hernandez, who was
experiencing serious liquidity problems some years ago," explains a respected
journalist who has closely followed the case. "They made contact th
rough a daughter of Hernandez who married a narcodealer in Miami and formed the
aviation company running the impounded drug planes and the real-estate firm
Immobiliario Los Reyes which launders drug money into constructio
n and various other enterprises." U.S. federal prosecutors have traced hundreds of
thousands of dollars Cano transferred from U.S. accounts to Hernandez and Elias
through the Dominican Banco Nacional de Credito. Investiga
tors believe that Cano has moved as much as $30 million into the Dominican Republic,
some of which ended up financing the presidential-election campaign of Fernandez.
. . . . "It's impossible to extradite Hernandez and Elias because they are too
well-connected with the business and political structure," according to prominent
Santiago journalist and radio talk-show host Esteban Rivero.
"They enjoy close relationships with Fernandez and other major political figures."
Antidrug officers recall that Cano, Hernandez and Elias met President Fernandez at an
election dinner in 1996 hosted by an important fund
-raiser and cousin of Elias, Jodtin Cury, who they say passed on checks written by the
narcos.
. . . . Copies of a canceled check for 100,000 pesos ($7,000) signed by Cano and
endorsed by Fernandez have circulated throughout various press sources in Santo
Domingo. They were featured in lead stories in the newspaper
La Nacion and on the major TV channel Antennae 3. TV news commentator Julio Hacin,
who claims to have seen the originals, explains that although the checks were made out
to the PLD, "in the Dominican Republic, presidenti
al candidates are personally responsible for managing their campaign spending and
supervising all contributions received and deposited through their party." Hacin
points out that Cano also contributed 125,000 pesos to Fer
nandez's main rival, the recently deceased Pena Gomez of the Partido Revolucionario
Dominicano.
. . . . Yet other reports maintain that Elias channeled far larger campaign
contributions to both parties. Fernandez is believed to have received at least
$500,000 from the drug interests in his election battle, which was
supported strongly by the Clinton administration. The White House viewed the
charismatic center-left Fernandez as cleaner than Gomez. Moreover, Fernandez presented
himself to the Clintons as "their type" of young progres
sive leader -- a man who could steer free-market policies with one hand while
decorating Castro with the other.
. . . . Is the Clinton administration in so deep with Fernandez that it is prepared to
sacrifice regional- and national-security interests to cover up his government's
narcocorruption? The Senate Foreign Relations Committ
ee is investigating. According to a high-level source in the committee, State
Department drug-enforcement officers posted in Santo Domingo -- whose
identities cannot at present be revealed -- came into possession of copies of
two checks Cano wrote to Fernandez shortly after he became a presidential
candidate in 1996. Knowing that joint investigations were being conducted on
Cano by U.S. and Dominican authorities, they turned the checks over to Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Narcotics and Law Enforcement Jane Becker. She
claims she showed them to State Department Assistant Secretary for Inter-
American Affairs Peter Romero. Two years after the scandal was aired in the
press and on television, Romero claims to have no knowledge of the matter. He
has been summoned to testify before the Senate. "It represents very serious
incompetence and negligence to say the least," says a Senate aide.
. . . . Ironically, the Clinton administration now is seeking to establish anti-
drug cooperation with Cuba.
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