-Caveat Lector- (DOMINICAN REPUBLIC) Vol. 15, No. 47 -- December 20, 1999 Published Date November 24, 1999, in Washington, D.C. http://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 Medell�n 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 automatic 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 Dominican 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 Department 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 country, 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, which 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 provide 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'Reilly 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 Dominican 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 most 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 smoked 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 casinos 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 Santiago'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 Minister 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 through 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 construction 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. Investigators 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, presidential 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 Fernandez'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 progressive 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 Committee 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. http://www.insightmag.com/articles/story5.html Bard DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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