U.S. Seeks Deals With Pro-Junta Haitian Elite

Senior U.S. officials have initiated large-scale business negotiations with some of the most powerful and wealthy Haitian supporters of the military overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Haitian business and political sources.

The secret talks came this week at the same time the United States was dismantling the Haitian army and supposedly engineering a new political environment to undermine the power of the same anti-democratic elite.

In one case, the sources said, Lt. Gen. Hugh Shelton, head of the U.S. military force that began arriving Monday to pave the way for Aristide’s restoration, talked with members of Haiti’s Mev family about leasing a large waterfront plot for construction of fuel storage tanks and a pipeline.

The Mevs, one of the wealthiest families here, acquiesced in the Sept. 30, 1991, coup and backed the brutal military regime financially, while using its connections to profit from the crisis surrounding the Aristide overthrow.

Other talks have centered on U.S. interest in acquiring land near the Port-au-Prince airport owned by the Madsen and D’Adesky families, who are among the bitterest foes of Aristide, the sources said.

The land would be leased by the U.S. military to house troops and facilities supporting the 15,000-member occupation force during its stay in Haiti.

According to the sources, Shelton not only offered to pay rent for the Mevs’ land but also proposed turning the storage tanks and the pipeline over to the family once U.S. forces are pulled back.

The Madsens and the D’Adeskys would also keep, free of charge, any improvements made to the property. Prices haven’t been settled and the deals are not yet completed, the sources said, but they could run into the millions of dollars.

None of the families could be reached for comment. Stanley Shrager, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, said that while he had no specific knowledge of the negotiations, “they are pragmatic and don’t imply endorsing any particular person or group.”

The Mevs have said they recognize that Aristide has to come back if Haiti is to have peace--a posture that diplomats and other experts say is simply an attempt to curry favor with the United States and “position themselves,” in the words of one Haitian political figure, “to make a buck.”

The Madsens and D’Adeskys, on the other hand, have unambiguously opposed the return of Aristide, whose populist and sometimes demagogic politics is seen as a threat to the power of what American diplomats call MREs, or Morally Repugnant Elite.

Another powerful family--one that approached the Americans this week--is headed by Fritz Brandt, who arranged hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Haiti’s military, including the financing of fuel shipments in defiance of an international economic embargo. He has also urged the Haitian military to resist Aristide’s return to the bitter end.

In fact, Brandt told a friend that he does not believe the exiled president would come back, even when U.S. soldiers began arriving Monday to enforce an agreement calling for the resignation of Haiti’s military dictators and Aristide’s restoration.

“It wasn’t until he saw (on television) Aristide receive a 21-gun salute during ceremonies in Washington last Wednesday that it dawned on him that Aristide is coming back,” the friend said.

The members of these families, and of many more who supported the coup, had been singled out by the United States for sanctions that included revocation of their American visas and residence permits and suspension of their U.S. bank accounts and other American financial holdings.

Yet their power seems unweakened. This week’s negotiations, in fact, underlined the hold the elite has on Haiti and its resiliency in the face of severe sanctions and international condemnation.

The families now involved with the Americans are included in a virtual cabal with such tight control of the Haitian economy that the international embargo imposed to punish the coup supporters actually was an instrument of profit for them.

For instance, the sanctions exempted food and related products, nearly all of which are imported and distributed here by the elite. The Mevs have a near-monopoly on sugar, vegetable oil, live chickens and propane.

They have also been in the cement-importing business with Lt. Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, the notorious head of the vicious and corrupt Port-au-Prince police.

The Brandts dominate trade in wheat and rice, the key imported food crops, and are also the most powerful bankers in the country, controlling credit and currency exchange.

The Madsens are major landholders and exporters and importers. Their many businesses include the bottling of 7-Up and Coca-Cola, Haiti’s only brewery and its major rum distillery.

“These people have made enormous profits even as they defied the world,” one Haitian businessman said. “Now, the Americans, instead of punishing them, are going to reward them.”

Some observers say there is no choice for the Americans but an ends-justify-the-means policy. “Because of the size (of the elite’s empire), it would be very difficult for them not to benefit,” said a Haitian political source who is strongly critical of the role played by the families.

“They control . . . everything that is necessary for this economy to run. So they’re going to make money, because the country needs what they have.”

The families themselves, some of whose members told American reporters right up until Monday’s U.S. troop arrival that they would fight to the death, seem to have easily modified their anti-American position.

“They’re taking it nice,” said a Haitian who associates with the elite. “They’ve always made a lot of money, and they don’t know why they won’t do it with the Americans.”

When it was suggested that “the Americans” might not want to further such a cause, the Haitian guffawed: “Why? They speak English, have beautiful wives, nice dinner plates. American officers like good dinners, no?”

One fast-talking Haitian businessman who smuggled everything from perfume to propane tanks to gasoline in violation of the embargo and was given high-powered weapons by the military to help fend off American invaders now claims to be “happy as I can be.”

“I’m going to get rich,” he said, waving his arms in exhilaration and grinning with delight.

“The Americans are going to bring in gasoline, pave the roads, cut tariffs--and I’m going to import cars and sell them by the hundreds.”

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