A mercenary tied to a Trump-friendly nonprofit got rights in 2019 to take over the controversial development of a Haitian island.
nearly a decade ago, his putative mission was to lead raid and rescue operations that would recover a missing American child. But by his own account, he did little work in that direction—and The Daily Beast has discovered he instead fell into the Caribbean state’s thorny politics, and into an unbelievable business deal: control of a paradisiacal island that Port-au-Prince seized from its inhabitants..
But by that time, the contacts Lopez had made through O.U.R. had already secured him power over the island of Ile-à-Vache. He did not respond to repeated outreach from The Daily Beast for this story.The remark referred to Gardy Mardy, a Haitian-American boy from Ballard’s home state of Utah, abducted in Port-au-Prince in late 2009, whose father, like Ballard, is active in the.
Fatton noted that Martelly triangulated between the U.S. and its rivals in the region, most notably Venezuela, which dispensed tens of millions from its PetroCaribe program to subsidize Haiti’s tourism ministry. The development of Ile-à-Vache soon became the Martelly government’s signature initiative. The seed for the new, island-spanning project was to be Abaka Bay, a hotel on Ile-à-Vache’s northwest tier, co-owned by an American citizen and his Haitian in-laws.
Dietrich also shared what he described as counter-offers he sent back to Martelly’s interlocutors as negotiations to build out Abaka Bay continued. In his open letter, and in conversations with The Daily Beast and other, and in the court case lodged in Michigan, he accused his ex in-laws of subsequently pushing him out of the business entirely.
“Ile-à-Vache was very rural, very rustic, very exotic,” he recalled. “People move on this island on foot, use a cow sometimes, but they move from one part to another part by walking.” “There was money, for the first time in Haiti—there was money to do what they wanted,” he lamented. “That’s what bothers me, as a Haitian.”, the 2018 documentary, leaves the impression that donations to O.U.R. would enable additional missions to find Gardy Mardy—and in the process to save other missing children from traffickers.
This is consistent with what The Daily Beast heard from Haitian sources, who believed O.U.R. was mainly an apparatus for milking cash from supporters in the United States.
The arrangement called for completion within 39 months. It also asserted that Watersmark S.A. already possessed $2.5 billion in financing. No one has alleged this deal violated either Haitian or American law, but materials The Daily Beast reviewed raise questions as to why Port-au-Prince decided to work with Lopez and his partners, and about the project’s viability.
“A lot of the work I did in Haiti helped me to have relationships within the government down there,” he told host Jimmy Rex. “I kind of helped bring the right kind of partners and teams down that wanted to implement a strategy that could develop that island into a multi-billion dollar resort with a new airport, new cruise ship terminal, in the south of the country, that was gonna basically create a massive stimulus program for the government of Haiti, who is a partner in this project.
“Tim Ballard started that organization, and I’ll forever be indebted to him for his work he did to pioneer this issue.”“Tim’s focus throughout multiple anti-trafficking missions to Haiti was doing everything possible to help rescue women and children from sexual slavery,” spokesman Chad Kolton told The Daily Beast. “He never spoke to any government officials about development projects.”
It was Woodson, insiders told The Daily Beast, who presented himself in Port-au-Prince as the consortium’s money manager. Woodson hasto have worked for members of the Saudi royal family, and Haitian sources said he boasted of relations with the Al Maktoum family that rules Dubai. This undated plan shows that Woodson, Abaka Bay owner Sajous, Lopez, and another longtime Woodson associate would each earn around $25,000 a month for at least the first half-year of the development’s duration. It also shows that the entrepreneurs sought to bring aboard an individual with the same name as one of the fraudsters who had invested in Woodson’s uncut diamond endeavor, as well as an attorney from the Haitian firm Cabinet Lissade.
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