U.S. sanctions Haiti’s former president, Michel Martelly, over role in drug trade

The United States has imposed sanctions on Michel Martelly, Haiti’s former president, “for his role in the global illicit drug trade,” the State Department said Tuesday.

Martelly, who lives in Miami but maintains a prominent political profile in Haiti, served as president of the volatile Caribbean country from May 2011 to February 2016. During that time, which included the period after the devastating 2010 earthquake, gang violence and drug trafficking flourished, and the country was hit with one of its biggest corruption scandals in decades: the alleged embezzlement of nearly $2 billion in aid from the Venezuelan oil program known as PetroCaribe.

The sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department won’t necessarily lay the foundation for a criminal prosecution in the U.S., but they could lead to global sanctions by the United Nations. The U.S. sanctions are considered the “death knell” for targets: Martelly, 63, won’t be able to access his bank accounts or other financial investments in the United States or do business with any person or business in this country.

In a statement, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Martelly “abused his influence to facilitate drug trafficking and has sponsored multiple Haiti-based gangs.”

Martelly facilitated the trafficking of dangerous drugs, including cocaine, destined for the U.S., Treasury said. Additionally, he is accused of engaging in the laundering of illicit drug proceeds, working with Haitian drug traffickers and sponsoring several Haiti-based gangs.

“Narcotics trafficking and gang-related violence have contributed to political instability and insecurity in Haiti, which has created an untenable living situation for the Haitian people,” the statement said. ”It is unacceptable for Haitian political and economic elites to plunder Haiti’s future.”

The U.S. designation of Martelly was a political bombshell in Haiti, where Prime Minister Garry Conille immediately called for an urgent cabinet meeting. Martelly’s longtime lawyer in Miami, Richard Dansoh, said he was unaware of the Treasury sanctions against his client. He said he would review the sanctions and respond later.

The U.S. is the second country after Canada to sanction Martelly, a onetime carnival singer-turned-politician who many believe has been contemplating another run as president even as he faces protests from some Haitians abroad. Martelly has slowly been trying to return to the Haitian music scene. On Saturday, he performed at the club Hollywood Live with the band Kreyol La. It was his third performance in the past few weeks, after one at Katz Restaurant in North Miami last month and another at a private party.

Last year, a U.N. group of experts charged with helping the U.N. Security Council decide on whom to sanction in Haiti accused the former president of “using gangs to extend his influence” in Haiti and advance his political agenda.

Martelly is accused of financing armed groups and providing them with weapons during his tenure. Sources also told the investigators that Martelly was responsible for the creation of Base 257, one of many gangs that has contributed to the country’s current security and humanitarian crisis.

Armed violence has displaced nearly 600,000 Haitians and led to more than 5 million Haitians facing hunger. Despite the ongoing deployment of a multinational security force led by Kenya, gangs have grown even bolder and have tightened their grip outside of the capital, pushing the U.S.-backed transition government to renew and expand a state of emergency to several cities beyond those in the Artibonite and West regions.

Brian Nichols, the administration’s top diplomat for the Western Hemisphere, called the decision to sanction Martelly an “important action” and said “the U.S. will continue to promote accountability towards a peaceful and prosperous Haiti.”

Martelly is no stranger to allegations of drug trafficking. He faced similar ones in 2010 when he made a bid for the Haitian presidency as the country tried to dig itself out under from the earthquake’s rubble. At the time, U.S. authorities, who had grown tired of President René Préval, supported Martelly and forced Préval to remove his candidate, Jude Célestin, from the ballot.

The controversial election and the political crisis that ensued is widely seen as having given birth to the current crisis.

Though not the first former president from Latin America and the Caribbean region to be slapped with economic sanctions by the United States, Martelly is the highest ranking among former Haitian presidents and politicians. Prior to him, the U.S. sanctioned his former prime minister, Laurent Lamothe in June of 2023, and four prominent former senators in late 2022 who were once either allies of Martelly or of his hand-picked chosen successor, the late President Jovenel Moïse.

‘Sugar Boat’ fiasco

For more than two decades, dozens of Haitian drug traffickers, politicians and businessmen have been prosecuted by U.S. authorities for either their direct involvement in or facilitating the shipment of Colombian cocaine through the Caribbean island to the U.S.

Although Martelly has never been charged criminally by federal prosecutors in Miami, one of the biggest drug-smuggling operations happened during his presidential term.

In the aftermath of his presidency, U.S. authorities launched an investigation into a Panamanian-flagged ship, the MV Manzanares, which had arrived in Port-au-Prince from Colombia in April 2015 hauling bags of imported sugar — and between 700 to 800 kilos of cocaine and 300 kilos of heroin, with an estimated street value of $100 million.

While unloading the sugar from the Manzanares, longshoremen stumbled across the hidden stash of drugs and a lawless free-for-all quickly unfolded. A host of people, including police officers assigned to Haiti’s National Palace and a judge, were suspected of grabbing the drugs. Also implicated was the former commander of Haiti’s anti-drug unit, who was accused of taking bribes to hinder the investigation into the Manzanares case, which became known as the “sugar boat” case.

The bungling of the sugar boat investigation came to light after two veteran Drug Enforcement Administration agents filed whistle-blower complaints, which triggered a Justice Department investigation into the effectiveness of the DEA’s drug-fighting efforts in Haiti. The Miami Herald exposed the bungled probe in 2018.

In July 2021, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found the DEA office in Haiti mishandled the investigation, including assisting and paying Haitian officials to destroy some of the drug evidence.

The DEA’s botched procedures were highlighted in a letter to President Joe Biden in which the drug agency’s own findings and report on the 2015 case were found to be “unreasonable.”

“Since the U.S. government expends resources for the DEA to operate in Haiti, it is incumbent on the agency to be as effective as possible in its mission to disrupt the flow of illegal drugs into the United States,” wrote Special Counsel Henry Kerner, who was tasked with assessing the allegations of wrongdoing.

Canadian sanctions

In November 2022 the Canadian government imposed sanctions on Martelly and two former Haitian prime ministers for financing gangs. Though the decision reflected a policy change by both Ottawa and Washington, the Biden administration had been reluctant to follow suit. That lack of leadership by the U.S. has made others reluctant to follow suit and fueled doubts in Haiti about how serious the policy is.

The issue of whether to sanction the former Haitian president, who is a U.S. legal resident, has been the subject of two years’ worth of internal debate about the implications for the U.S. and for the political landscape in a crisis-ridden Haiti. Martelly, his Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale and allies remain political forces in the country where some sanctioned politicians have been discussing a formula to put in place a new transitional president amid an ongoing bank bribery scandal involving the current transitional council.

The political shock waves are likely to be felt for sometime inside the country, where a string of sanctions against prominent Haitian politicians initially created fear, but soon appeared to have had little effect as violence by armed gangs escalated and several sanctioned politicians returned to the political scene.

“I think he’s essentially politically dead for the moment,” Robert Fatton, a Haiti-born political scientist who recently retired from the University of Virginia, said about Martelly. “I don’t know if he’s going to be able to still influence politics because if they freeze his funds and don’t allow him to have any transactions, I am not sure how he can be of significance anymore in the political game in Haiti. I think that is a major shift.”

Fatton said the U.S. decision could be a game changer for Martelly, who appeared unbothered by the Canadian sanctions. “I am not sure why they did it now. The institutions in Haiti are not good, as we all know, and it doesn’t look like the Kenyans are making a big difference with the advances of the gangs. It may be something to warn people, ‘We are getting more serious.’ But I don’t know how you get more serious if you don’t have more influence militarily in Haiti itself.”

In a recent interview with the Miami Herald, the Biden administration’s top envoy to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the U.S. remains committed to pursuing sanctions against those who finance gangs and political instability in Haiti.

Her statement came less than two weeks after she made the unusual move of publicly announcing during a Security Council session that the U.S. had tried to get the U.N. to impose global sanctions against a former president of the Haitian Senate and one-time Martelly adviser, Youri Latortue. Thomas-Greenfield said the move was blocked by other members on the council. The members were Russia and China, the Miami Herald has since learned.