High Level Black/African OC in 2017

There definitely were some pretty sophisticated Black/African OC groups based out of Harlem back in the day ( f.ex the Frank Lucas organization ) . I also know that certain Nigerian groups are considered to be fairly sophisticated as well , though if I'm not mistaken they are much closer to being networks than organizations .

All that said most of the present day press involving Black/African organized crime , both in the USA and Europe , involves relatively unsophisticated street gangs . Which begs the question of are there any high level/sophisticated Black/African crime groups out there in 2017 ? Are they very under the radar or just too few in number to generate much press ? Also if any such organizations exist , then do they engage in a wider variety of rackets than their past counterparts ?

I'm asking because to my knowledge the more formidable Black/African crime groups like Frank Lucas's gang and the Black Mafia Family were mainly centered around drug trafficking . Granted it's certainly true that Nigerian groups have a reputation for engaging in white collar fraud , however ( as I wrote above ) these groups often seem to be more like loose networks as opposed to true blue organizations .

I got some sophisticated guys over at my Black Organized Crime section at Gangsters Inc. Includes OC from the US, Europe, and wherever the story takes me: http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime

2A

There's a varity of Black & African Syndicates with various structures. There are certain street organizations with structure on par with the bikers such as Chicago's Black Souls; A branch was raking in 11 million a year from drug trade plus other activities. Please read my past post along with Scorsese. We been covering this for 5+ years now.

I think if we should talk about blck organized crime,
Theirs four groups that come out of the lot.

You have the nigerian syndicate/mafia. The Nigerians groups
like the Black Axe, are in many countries of the world, and they are
all linked together. There presence is strong in many countries in africa,
like south africa and the ivory coast. They also habe a great presence in
many asian countries, like india, vietnam, japan and others. The nigerian
mafia are very strong in the states of Gao in India. They are also strong
in many european countries like italy, spain and england. Some sources will
say they are also in brazil, chicago, netherlands and other countries. Theses groups
are aleays link together. And the source is in Nigeria.

The second group would be the jamaican posses. They have lost alot of power since
the 80s and 90s due to murders and deportations.But the jamaican groups, like the shower posse
have or had a great presence in miami, nyc, philly, houston, toronto, england and probably other
places.

The third group would be the haitians. Since the 80s, the country of haiti has become more and
more important in the drug trade. During the reign of duvalier (the son), the military, the police and
some rich groups, have become some kind of caribbean cartel. A mini cartel if compared to mexico or
colombia, but still powerful enough to be one of the biggest place of cocaine in the caribbean with the dominican
republic. A lot of drugs coming to the US or Canada come from Haiti. Also, with the US, venezuela,Haiti is the top country
in arms trafficking in the caribbean. Alot of guns found in jamaica or others caribbeam countries come from haiti. And no,
is not international group who just utilize haiti. Haitians groups have a lot of decisions in this. Also, in the US, haitians groups
are probably the black group beside african americans, who have alot of power in the rap industry. With names like haitian jack, henchmann, zoe pound and probably others. Haitians are really present in miami, new york, montreal, bahamas (1/3 of the population),
Guadeloupe, martinique, Dr

And the last one would be african american groups like those from LA, nyc, chicago.
Many started as street gangs, but some of them have become real organized crime group.
Some are in drugs, prodtitution, gambling etc. But the biggest things they succeed in by
doing money laundering with the help of the entertainment buisness.

The Suri-Cartel led by Desi Bouterse, now President of Suriname.

Black American crime groups are similar to Nigerian groups in regard to networks of various sizes involved in specific rackets.

Yes african american have a large network. I thinks the african american organized crime groups are linked to many other organized crime groups around the world. Black american do import drugs to the US with the help of their connections, from many hispanics or black countries. Lets not forget, the US is the biggest market for drugs. Groups like BMF, JBM, GDs and others are well know. But their are other groups that are in the shadows, until the FBI or the news start talking about them.

They are also in gambling, money laundering, scams and i’m sure white collar crime.

I think the biggest problem about black organized crime in the US, is gangbanging. Gangbanging doesn’t help a group to grow, because gangbanging make hustlings more difficult, because of the attention of laws enforcement and other gangs.

Gangbanging is a mixed bag in itself. Some of it's over money and other times pride. Most of those peak years of it is done.

Minorities could never form a true mafia in this country because they can't corrupt the police, the way Italians, Jews, and the Irish did. Without cops on the take, a gang can't get much further than gang status. Suge Knight was on his way to forming a mob, then look how hard the indictments came down on the LAPD people he was connected to. Coincidence? Probably not.

Suge wasn't even close to forming a mob family. He was a gangster who made (and wasted) a ton of money. A mob/mafia family has their hands into every single thing in their town literally. Suge wasn't even close to that. I don't think he even led any Bloods did he? Other than paying a few to do some dirty work of course.

Suge had LAPD working for him, very likely had two of them take out Biggie. There was a brief time in the '90s that Suge could have anyone short of an elected officials killed in LA (and maybe Vegas...) He might not have been Mickey Cohen, but the kind of corruption he had going in LA was similar.

Yes racism has alot to do about the growth of black organized crime groups in america. I read an article in gangster bb, about an italian mobster who said that politicians didn't accept money from blacks back in the days. But it was back in the days, now we don't know. Black organized groups from the caribbean or africa thats another thing.

Sorry for my english, I speak french

I think the FBI and the US tried to stop people like suge knight, because the rap industry became some king of black organized crime. When you have groups or people like suge knight, J.Prince, Harry O, BMF, Boobie Boys, many people from nyc, LA or Atl. Big drug dealers, this industry become some kind of crime families.
Lets be honest, the rap industry like many other industries is controled by gangsters.

The JBM in Philly in the 80's, were no joke. And Camden NJ had a crew in the early 90's called the sons of malcolm x. Very violent crew. Too much violence to last for any length of any time on the streets.

As a researcher on Black OC from the 1920-70 in various cities, police corruption was everywhere. The Black racketeers did have police, judges, and alderman/councilmen on their payroll or bribe. Profits speaks louder than racism generally. From paying the county sheriff in Mississippi to supporting the alderman in Bronzeville, Chicago. Major rackets of that time was Gambling ( Numbers, Policy, Cards & Dice), Bootlegging ( some people don't know that) , Prostitution & Drugs trade ( most spoken obviously). There was a national policy association that included kingpins/queenpins from NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Gary, St.Louis, Indianapolis, DC, Nashville, & Atlanta. I could be missing a few other cities. During the 30-40s was the peak of the numbers/policy racket moneywise in Midwest/Northeast black communities along in the West too. The South is a mix bag of gambling & bootlegging rackets in the black communities.

I think due to L.E ( law enforcement) , Criminologists, & Mainstream media use La Cosa Nostra as the model to set the definition of OC when it's ambiguous definition wise. Add the USA history of discrimination than it's viewed as non-white crime groups can't form similar syndicates which is completely untrue. Each group is different just like the Jewish mobs to Irish mobs. Black syndicates are structured to facilitate the racket like a business not a club/fraternity setting. That's the common misunderstanding when comparisons are made to LCN. The growth of street organizations and 1% club shaped the black underworld.

The sports & music industry have a long history with the black underworld prior to hip-hop formation. Jazz to Rock N Roll to Disco along with Boxing & Baseball have indirect ties to Black racketeers. Everybody heard of Joe Louis and his manager was John Roxborough, well Roxborough also was one of Detroit's premier numbers kingpin.

French article about the nigerian mafia in Italy. Ya’ll can use Google translater, its a good article.

https://www.google.ca/amp/amp.paris...-sous-l-emprise-des-black-mafias-1261841

Another article about the nigerian mafia and there key role in africa and europe.

http://mobile.lemonde.fr/afrique/ar...-de-la-mafia-nigeriane_5107002_3212.html

Which city are you from?

Theodore Roe was the one controlling the numbers and bootlegging in chicago black neighborhoods during the 40s and the beginning of the 50s.

Roughly late 40s until his death. Big 12 syndicate had control through 30s until 40s.

ballarò is not a black neighborhood is an italian one with some africans living, nigerian refugees arrived recently etc. and it's dominated by the sicilian mafia
the strongholds of nigerian mafia in italy are turin and padua, in the north
the black axe boss in italy was arrested in padua

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-suge-knight-attorney-20180125-story.html

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/haiti-drugs.htm

Some news about drug trafficking in Haiti.

During the time of BMF, was there some african-american groups that as powerfull as them?

I think there was an organization from seattle or phoenix. I read that somewhere, but I dont remember. Young african american from good families, not wealthy but neither poor. Those guys form a group that was involved in many criminal activities. But i forgot the name of this group and where I read it.

BMF were not powerful. contrary to popular belief,they were not involved in crime. BMF were a record label. the name was not BMF but "BMF Entertainment". the book "BMF Rise & Fall of Big Meech" was 99% fiction. the author Mara Shaloup writes for a tabloid newspaper called Creative Loafing,it's the same as National Enquirer. everything in the book was sensationalized, and exaggerated. it's not a reliable sauce, and neither is Wikipedia. when you do a google search on BMF, the first thing that comes up is the fake Wikipedia page,full of false information. And after that it's the book,which belongs in fiction and not the true crime section. and when you look up BMF online what you'll moastly find are dozens of hip hop websites talking about BMF. notice you'll never find any actual news articles,or crime writers discussing BMF,only gossip columnists and entertainment sites.

I think the name BMF was only a front cover for money laundering. But the members of bmf and the leaders, were in organized crime since Detroit.

Was BMF powerful? Depends to what type of organization you compared them to.
Was BMF the same level as organized crime in nigeria or caribbean countries? I dont think so. But I think they could rivaled some MC’s

I thought BMF was a huge drug traffickers. And that one brother started the record label later. Cause he loved the spotlight. Those guys had a very long run.

Speaking of black organized crime in Detroit, what about that former mayor? Kilpatrick? Had a stripper whacked to prevent her from testifying about a party he threw. Investigation confirmed she was killed with standard issue Detroit PD weapon. The poor lady also got her ass kicked at the party when Kilpatrick's wife walked in.

Of course there was and still are other black dto as or more widespread than bmf

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40365766

Guy Philippe an haitian politician who was arrested for drug trafficking and money laundering.

BMF never existed in Detroit. that's a myth. do a search of the archives in the Detroit Free Press,or any Detroit news media and you will see zero mention of BMF, Demetrious Flenory, or Terry Flenory in the 1990's or early 2000's. I will delete my account right now if you can find me one news article or court document from the 90's or prior to 2003 that mentions BMF. the truth is, Demetrious was a small-time wannabe rap CEO who never sold drugs and moved to Atlanta to start his music career in 2001. BMF Entertainment was a short lived record label,they lasted 2 years at the moast from 2001 to 2003. I would not consider that a long run,or successful run. BMF were a toatal failure,and mara shaloup the tabloid journalist is the only reason anyone has ever heard of BMF.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/...d-us-regions-major-illegal-guns-supplier

Arms trafficking in the caribbean

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/03/29/detroit-empire/99743294/

Detroit — A prominent Detroit music mogul allegedly is one of the largest heroin dealers in the Midwest and using his rap label to launder drug money, according to sealed federal court records.

Are Jamaican posses proper organized crime groups ? Or does that depend on their country of location ? I've read that many Jamaican so called posses that operate in the UK are actually disorganized bands of thugs that happen to associate with one another , which is why I'm asking .

Yes. It depends on the groups as well on their own level of operations. In the U.K they're more known as Yardies or Massives.

Two days ago Uriel 'Rooksie' James, the leader of the Jamaican Rose Town-based Discipline Gang was shot and injured in the parking lot of the Spartan Health Club in New Kingston. James was leaving the club shortly before 8 o'clock when two men dressed like construction workers opened fire.

Campanella Park Piru and BMF

https://www.dea.gov/divisions/la/2007/la110707p.html

this article is moar than 10 years old,and is inaccurate. BMF Entertainment were not involved in drug sales. if you read it,you'll see that the only people arrested are C.P.P. members. there is no such thing as a BMF member,because it was a record label and knot a mafia. but one interesting question,if BMF are this alleged "Mafia" why are they being supplied by a local street gang? it doesn't add up. don't believe everything you read. BMF were strictly a music entertainment company,but no longer exist. BMF Entertainment only lasted from 2001 to 2003 in Atlanta, ga. BMF didn't exist in Detroit,and didn't form in the 90's.both are false claims that have been disproven time and time again

http://gangsterreport.com/flukey-stokes/

Flukey Stokes, Chicago kingpin

The notorious drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was elected in 1982 “as an alternate member of Colombia’s Congress”. In 1984, he was forced to resign after two years because of his direct involvement in drug production and smuggling to the United States. The Ronald Reagan administration pressured the Colombian president, Luis Carlos Garlan, to prevent Escobar from sitting in the parliament.

In 1989, the US Marine invaded Panama to capture Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former Panamanian strongman, and flew him to Miami based on a 1988 indictment for drug smuggling and money laundering. He spent 17 years in prison in the United States. Later, he was jailed in France in 2010 before being extradited to his own country Panama. He died there of cancer on May 29, 2017.

In 2004, another coup d’état took place in Haiti, which toppled the duly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide from power. The United States, via the DEA, imprisoned many disgraced Haitian officials in Miami. Among them were a Haitian police’s general director, a senator, and former president Aristide’s chief bodyguard.

All of them were convicted of drug trafficking.

In 2011, Hillary and Bill Clinton, without regard for the law or decency, installed Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly to power as president of Haiti. The latter is a well-known drug dealer and consumer. He shared more than the name “Sweet Mickey” with the late army lieutenant colonel, police chief, and Fort Bragg graduate, Joseph Michel “Sweet Mickey” Francois, a subsequently indicted drug smuggler and one of the main authors of the bloody first U.S-backed regime change (Sept. 30, 1991) that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In an interview with the New York Times, Martelly admitted being a cocaine user, and elsewhere he spoke about being a thief and crackhead. It is also noteworthy to highlight that he continues to be the spiritual leader of the PHTK ruling party, also known as “bandit légal” (legal bandit). Since 2011, the Haitian national palace has become a paradise for drug dealers, arms traffickers, and other human right violators.

In that same vein, Jacques Bedouin Kétant was arrested in Haiti in 2003. He was rapidly transferred to the United States to face drug accusations. A judge found him guilty of sending more than 30 kilos of cocaine to the states and sentenced him to 27 years in prison. On August 18, 2015, the US judicial system decided to deport Jacques Kétant back to Haiti after serving half of his previously scheduled prison term because the court found him to be very cooperative. Upon his return to Haiti, Mr. Kétant was picked up at the capital airport by two important individuals: Roro Nelson and Gracia Delva. Mr. Nelson is former president Michel Martelly’s closest and longtime friend; some people believed that he was there to welcome Mr. Kétant as per Mr. Martelly’s order. Similarly, Mr. Gracia Delva, a seating senator, a deportee from the United States was also present at the airport to greet the convicted drug kingpin. Delva went as far to admit that his friend Jacques Kétant had given him a very expensive car. Here is a partial list of ex-president Martelly’s and current president Moise’s closest allies who are notorious for their criminal activities:

Guy Philippe, elected senator (or selected as senator for others) but couldn’t take the oath because he was arrested by Haitian police and DEA agents. He was quickly transferred to the United States and soon pronounced guilty of money laundering drug monies. He is now serving a 9-year jail sentence in the U.S. Mr. Philippe and president Jovenel Moise waged their political campaign together.
Hervé Fourcand: actual Haitian senator; he is implicated in many drug and arms trafficking in Haiti. For instance, when the so-called Leonard Désir was arrested in possession of 20 kilos of cocaine, he testified that the drug belonged to the senator who owns a private jet believed to be used for drug smuggling all over the country.
Youri Latortue, also a senator, has been involved in drug activities, according to Wikileaks’ documents.
Joseph Lambert, the current president of the Haiti Senate and actual president of the Haiti National Assembly is also the incriminated President Jovenel Moise’s close ally and one of former president Michel Martelly’s advisers. He has similarly been accused of having high-level connections with drug dealers and has been involved in other criminal activities;
Senator Willot Joseph has been implicated in drug trafficking.
The Haitian Senate is a sanctuary for drug dealers and criminals. This article is presenting a small tip of the iceberg in terms of drug trafficking activities condoned by the actual Haitian government and its acolytes. The most troubling element of the puzzle is that the United States is aware of all those wrongdoings but has decided to turn a blind eye on everything.

President Jovenel Moïse was put in power last year (2017) by ex-president Michel Martelly via a fraudulent election, endorsed by the US/UN/NGO occupational forces. He had run a 2 year campaign that cost millions of dollars. Many suspected that drug money was involved in the process. Mr. Moïse had been indicted for money laundering just days before he took the oath as president. The justice department stopped the process because the constitution of the land doesn’t permit to prosecute a president in office; he is enjoying the sacred immunity for 5 years.

In 2010, it was well-documented, by many national electoral council members, that the Clintons (Bill and Hillary), under the Obama administration, outmaneuvered Ms. Myrlande Manigat to impose Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly as president of Haiti. The former individual is a university professor in Haiti and abroad. She completed her studies at the Sorbonne, the oldest and most prestigious university in France. Why did the Clintons inflict such a horrific pain on a country they have pretended to love so much? Putting such a despised being as Martelly in power was the last blow to Haiti’s prestige.

Nowadays, the country is totally at the mercy of drug dealers, arms traffickers and corrupt leaders [aka “Legal Bandits) who have stolen and diverted an estimated $4 billion in US dollars. Impunity reigns supreme in this land directly occupied by US-led United Nations forces since 2004. With such high-level back-up, no one is talking; fear rules in Haiti. Haitian institutions are permeated in a terrible and repressive silence; freedom of speech replaced by the mafia code of silence – the cosa nostra’s Omerta Law. Poverty and organized crime have struck out a big number of honest citizens who are forced to seek refuge and survival from the reigning repression and totalitarianism in other countries, such as Chile, Brazil, Mexico. Haiti is in total despair. No light can be seen at the end of the tunnel.

I have talked to some prominent Haitians in the diaspora and in Haiti who have thusly summarized and point to US responsibility in Haiti’s quagmire: “they broke it, they own it”. They believe that Washington has created the situation. Therefore, it has the moral responsibility to support the people’s efforts to regain their sovereignty in the interest of the rule of law and peaceful co-existence.

In Haiti, it has been rumored that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is on the ground. Former president Joseph Martelly and his son, Olivier Martelly, would be among the targets. Nobody has either confirmed or denied these allegations. Tension runs high and the panic is palpable among the lawmakers and oligarchs engaged in corruption who may already be the subjects of sealed DEA indictments just as Guy Philippe was since 2005 but not arrested in Haiti by the DEA until 2017. The country is waiting!

The presidency is influenced directly by well-connected drug dealers. The Parliament is heavily ruled by active gun and drug traffickers. The legal system is the hands of gangsters and the wealthy but repugnant billionaires of the Caribbean.

What Pablo Escobar failed to achieve in Colombia for more than thirty years, a mercenary clan operating in Haiti has achieved. Haiti is arguably the only narco-state in the world run directly by a US-led United Nations humanitarian front.

Good info . Thanks for posting.

You’re welcome

Nigeria accounts for about 70% of the illegal small arms in West Africa’ There are indications that West Africa is conveniently situated for drug and illegal weapons’ trade between South America and Europe, and Nigeria accounts for about 70% of the illegal small arms in the sub-region. These hints are contained in 20-pages report titled ‘CrimeJust: Fact Sheet Nigeria’ published by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) under the aegis of Criminal Justice project supported by the European Union (EU) implemented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in partnership with INTERPOL and Transparency International. The report which aims at raising policy consciousness on the dreadful impacts of Organised Crime and enhancing the capacity of relevant authorities to effectively devise appropriate countermeasures reveals that Nigeria stands at the centre of a number of transnational crimes. According to the report, the existing porous borders have not only paved ways for free flow of arms in and out of Nigeria but also contributed to increasing number of violent conflicts, constant human and drug trafficking which remain a challenge to authorities within and outside Nigeria. The report observes that the broken political system, corrupt law enforcers and social environment are contributory challenges to many criminal activities as socially acceptable, thereby putting Nigeria at the epicentre of highly internationalised and organised crime. “The established linkage between the worst forms of criminality at an industrial scale and the political elite is widely observed and documented both in Nigeria and internationally.” Narrating the networks in Organised Crime, the report traces drug trafficking and other serious crime to high public officials including the police and the army. “Political Exposed Persons and individuals within the Nigerian police and armed forces do not only assist criminal activities but also sometimes run illegal activities including drug and human trafficking and weapons smuggling. “Drug trafficking, money laundering, arms manufacturing and arms trafficking, human trafficking, advance fee fraud, armed robbery and commercial kidnapping, piracy, pipeline vandalism and cybercrime are forms of organised crime with significant Nigerian involvement nationally and internationally. “Allegations of corruption, heavy-handedness, and politicization have dogged the Nigeria Police Force,” it recounted. The report discloses that drug trafficking remains a thriving business and serious issue with a global dimension of Nigerian involvement, noting that networking Nigerian gangs operate from Brazil and other South American countries though Europe and South East Asia with no fewer than 30% of the foreigners arrested across Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Portugal were from West Africa, mostly Nigeria. On human trafficking related crime, the report explains that vast and porous borders have exacerbated human trafficking routes from Nigeria through North African countries in the Sahara via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. “These vast borders have proven to be very difficult to control. The porosity of Nigeria’s borders has serious security implications for the country. “With the porosity of Nigeria’s border, the security of Nigeria is threatened by the flow of arms, criminals, terrorists, drugs and thriving illegal human trafficking operations. “Law enforcement agencies and security services are poorly organised, ineffective and, frequently, too corrupt to control the influx of drugs and other transnational crime to enter and exit Nigeria,” the report noted. As related to reporting of abuses by security establishment, the report observes that frequent verbal and physical threats and repeated crackdown on whistle-blowers, journalists and activists persistently obstruct accessibility to public information increasing public disillusion about meaningful participation in governance. The report further bemoans rivalry and overlapping roles amongst the law enforcement agencies with resultant poor coordination in the fight against Organised Crime, stating that the lingering inability of the agencies to exchange information and data results in incomplete evidence from prosecution in complex cases of organised crime, and poor conviction rate.

Read more at: https://prnigeria.com/general/nigeria-llegal-arms-west-africa/

https://prnigeria.com/general/nigeria-llegal-arms-west-africa/

The Rise and Fall of Haitian Drug Lord Jacques Ketant

It was supposed to be easy. Edouard Rene Joseph was a combat vet, Desert Storm, so he had trimmed the situation down to simple mission objectives: Get into the country, pick up the kids, leave the country. One day, tops. No big deal. "It's not," he would muse years later, "like you're trying to take prisoners out of Saigon."

Joseph's mother, Claudie Adam, had asked him to go to Haiti to help his sister Sibylle retrieve her children from their estranged father, who was refusing to send them back to Miami after a visit. Joseph couldn't say no. Buried under his burly frame — tall with wide shoulders ending in fists that didn't mind a fight and topped with a friendly face that could deflate quickly into a hard stare — was a devoted son. The 26-year-old tossed aside the law-school exam books he'd been studying and hopped on a plane.

In country on February 10, 1997, Joseph and his sister easily found the 6-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl at school. They grabbed the kids, then headed to the airport for an afternoon flight back to Miami. But before they arrived, Joseph and Sibylle learned from family friends that Haitian police officers were at the gates, ready to seize the children. They considered driving 60 miles, crossing into the Dominican Republic, and flying out from there. But they got word that border police were waiting there too.

Haiti is a small country," Joseph says. "Everyone knows who to call to find out things. And that's what the word was we were getting: There are pictures [of the children] everywhere; there are police officers who had been paid off."

Desperate, Joseph and his sister went to the U.S. embassy. But officials there offered no help, he says. A custody spat had blown up into a national incident, and they were stuck.

This is what happens when an estranged husband is a cocaine trafficker with his hands on the country's levers of power.

Sibylle's husband was Beaudoin "Jacques" Ketant, then 33 years old and responsible for smuggling tens of thousands of kilos of cocaine annually into the United States. A year earlier, Ketant had evaded arrest in New York by slipping onto a Haiti-bound flight disguised as a woman. Now, U.S. authorities were preparing to hit him with an indictment for cocaine trafficking and money laundering. But on his home turf — a country infected like a bad molar with narcotics — Ketant was untouchable, as Joseph was finding out.

Joseph, believing he had done all he could, decided he would return to New York the next day. But that night, before his flight, his phone buzzed with a call that jerked his whole world out of place. His mother had been gunned down in Miami. Joseph's mind darted to his bullying, power-mad brother-in-law.

For nearly 20 years now, the question of who killed Claudie Adam has taken a back seat to Ketant's rise and fall. The trafficker ascended the drug game like a rocket in the 1990s, when Haiti was sandbagged by one corrupt government after another. According to court documents, affidavits, witness testimony, and published reports, the smuggler cut deals with cartels, partnered with military juntas, and got so close to politicians that he was feted at the National Palace. At the height of his power, Ketant was making $13 million a year in illegal drug runs and amassing "Midas-like quantities of material assets," in the words of prosecutors. Although his name won't make it into the country's official history books, Ketant arguably shaped contemporary Haiti as much as any other public figure.

The influence continued after Ketant was taken into U.S. custody in 2004 and sentenced to 27 years in federal prison. The trafficker's second act was as a star witness, tossing dozens of former co-conspirators, including corrupt politicians and policemen, into the open jaws of U.S. prosecutors. Because he cooperated, this April, a federal judge cut Ketant's sentence in half. By the expedient logic of the drug war, Ketant had earned enough points to cancel out his bad acts. He was released from federal prison and is currently in the custody of U.S. Immigration. He is asking to stay in the United States, claiming he will likely be killed if he returns to his home country.

This infuriates Edouard Joseph, whose ears are still ringing with gunshots that tore through his family. He still has questions that need answers — and so do Miami-Dade cold-case investigators, who hint that they are making headway in the investigation into Claudie Adam's murder.

"It doesn't take a genius," Joseph says, "to realize somebody who is responsible for the murder of your mother, them getting out of jail — and not having their head put on a stick — is not something you're happy about."
It was thanks to Pablo Escobar that Haiti secured its place on the underground conveyor belt feeding Colombian cocaine to the United States. As federal court documents describe, in the late 1980s, the infamous, pot-bellied head of Colombia's Medellín cartel was casting his eye around the Caribbean looking for a route through which he could pass some product. Escobar then controlled 80 percent of the world cocaine market, and his business was making $60 million a day. He needed a way station with the right mix of political instability, biblical poverty, and bribe-hungry officials.

Haiti then was the hottest geopolitical mess in the hemisphere. François "Papa Doc" Duval­ier, a doctor and self-described voodoo priest, had served as "President for Life" from 1957 to 1971, during which time 30,000 Haitians were killed and more exiled as the dictator clung to power. His son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, took over at age 19 and lived lavishly while his country spiraled downward; he was ousted in a popular uprising in 1986.

Escobar sent minions into the power vacuum. By 1987, bribed Haitian officials had built and monitored an airstrip outside Port-au-Prince for kilo-loaded planes. The cartel was working directly with Lt. Col. Joseph-Michel François, a career soldier nicknamed "Sweet Micky." In 1987 alone, François safeguarded 70,000 pounds of Escobar's nose candy through Haiti to America. For this, he earned a reported $4 million.

In December 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic Selesian Catholic priest, rode 67 percent of the vote to the presidency. The new president was seen as a well-intentioned reformist and a possible threat to drug profits. But political stability is the suicide cocktail for a boom-market narco business. Before Aristide could celebrate his one-year anniversary in office, a group of military officials — including François — ousted him from office and put him on a plane to Venezuela in October 1991.

Postcoup, François appointed himself head of the Port-au-Prince police department and installed trusted associates in the top positions at Haiti's ports and the capital's airport, shouldering out any obstacles to the cocaine trade.

François also got a lucrative side game going. Corrupt officials at the Port-au-Prince airport hunted for other traffickers who hadn't paid the junta's toll, then seized the competition's product. To offload these drugs, François tapped a small-time crew of drug smugglers run by Jacques Ketant.

It was a family affair. There are few details in the public record about Ketant's upbringing, but later court files and police reports show the Haitian-raised Ketant stocked his criminal enterprise with brothers, cousins, and brothers-in-law. He also relied heavily on ties forged in the Miami neighborhood called Little Haiti, where many Haitian expats had resettled. These connections gave the drug smuggler a stateside foothold that was likely attractive to François.

According to court testimony, in the late 1980s, two Haiti-born, Miami-raised best friends — nicknamed "Chief" and "New Chief" — had a brainstorm while working security at Miami International Airport. "I noticed how easy it would be to allow couriers with suitcases filled with cocaine to go through," one — "Chief" Evens Gourgue — later explained in a federal courtroom. "It was a very, very simple task. You could imagine it, with a flip of a key, within two or three seconds, you are making $30,000 or $60,000."

The bad-apple civil servants slipped word of their availability into the Little Haiti gossip mill. Pretty soon, they were working with numerous dealers — including Ketant — who moved product from the island into the airport. For $2,000 per kilo, traffickers would be assured that their drug courier could walk off a plane arriving from Port-au-Prince without the hassle of nosy customs agents.

"[The courier] would bring his carry-on bag back to the information counter with the notion that he needed assistance with his forms," Gourgue testified. "As soon as I felt it was clear behind the counter, there were no other Dade County employees, I would simply make a bag switch with him, and that bag would stay within that counter until my shift was over, and I walked out... with the cocaine in the bag, uncontested.

The corrupt officials also began letting drug smugglers pass through "sterile," or off-limits, parts of the airport. "I saw no problem whatsoever in meeting them while they are in transition from the aircraft to immigration and rerouting them through a door which would eventually lead them to the free side of the terminal," Gourgue explained.

With Ketant taking care of shipments in the United States, François made sure the smugglers had a free pass in Haiti. The military strongman's personal bodyguards drove Ketant's drugs to the airport. Ketant and his brother were arrested by Haitian officials in summer 1994, but within 24 hours, he was released by members of the Haitian narcotics squad. The smugglers even used a military radio frequency to communicate. "There would be communications, such as 'the package left,'?" a crew member told a federal court in 1998. They would state "that the package left, the bird left the nest, or the bird arrived, or the package just arrived, depending on whether money was coming in or cocaine was leaving Haiti."

Ketant was a fixture on both ends of the pipeline. He would frequently ride on the same flights as his drug couriers. Between 1992 and March 1995, Ketant entered the United States at least 40 times. In South Florida, he was a regular at hangouts favored by traffickers, including an illegal Little Haiti gambling joint called Neptune's and a club called the Eight Ball. Ketant and his associates leveraged connections to put their drugs in markets from Miami to New York to Chicago. Prosecutors would later determine that Ketant was responsible for bringing 30,000 kilograms of cocaine into the country.

Big speed bumps didn't slow business. Pablo Escobar's 1993 death at the hands of Colombian antidrug forces, Aristide's 1994 return to power, even François' eventual exile to Honduras — Ketant continued through it all. Even in the mid-1990s, when the two chiefs' schemes at the Miami airport came under the scrutiny of officials, Ketant simply retooled, found a bribe-hungry baggage handler at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and began moving couriers through New York City.


But U.S. officials began to eye the Haiti-Miami connection. In January 1992, two suitcases were abandoned on a Haiti Trans-Air flight into Miami. Inside were three kilos of cocaine. The flight itinerary listed a Jacques Ketant on the same flight. In September 1993, customs agents discovered 63 pounds of cocaine at the same airport, again loaded on a flight from Haiti. Inside the luggage was a phone number for the husband of Ketant's sister. In 1995, customs nabbed a Haitian national carrying almost three pounds of cocaine — and Ketant's business card.

Edouard Joseph and his sister Sibylle were latchkey kids. Their mother, Claudie Adam, juggled jobs across Miami, from nursing at Jackson Memorial Hospital to working at the airport. The Haiti-born woman disappeared into her work schedule. Joseph remembers going a month without seeing her at their home in West Kendall.

The grind paid off. Adam later came to own a video arcade in Little Haiti as well as a travel agency focusing on flights to the island. Joseph remembers her making friendly small talk with prostitutes and fronting tickets for empty-pocketed Haitians trying to get back to the island after a family death. He says this endeared her to the community. "There was a point of time where every business in Little Haiti on 54th Street was getting robbed," Joseph remembers. "My mom's office? Never robbed."

In 1986, Joseph was 15 and Sibylle 18, and their baby half-brother was 2. Their mother's new husband, who owned a Little Haiti restaurant but also ran the bolita — an illegal lottery — was gunned down in front of their Kendall house, the engine still running on his gold Mercedes. Claudie soldiered on. "My mom's a tough cookie," Joseph says.

Their neighborhood was full of single moms from the Caribbean who'd chased opportunity stateside with their kids. It seemed like every third word passing from their lips was "college." Joseph remembers that everybody watched The Cosby Show, the first depiction of a black family holding down a piece of the American dream. Parents here expected their kids to replicate their success and to surpass it. Joseph and Sibylle would travel to Haiti to visit family, and the economic strides that his mother had made became clear to her son. Joseph says, "I looked at my mom and thought, If she can do this and be this incredible individual, then that's the bar. I have to surpass that tenfold."

There was a dad-shaped hole in his life, but uncles served as role models: a doctor in New York, a businessman in Haiti. "These guys walked with this cocksure confidence; it was so impressive. They looked like Denzel in Training Day, these great guys making stuff happen. You look at these guys and you're like, 'That's a guy. That's what I should be. That's what being a man is all about.'?"

Joseph suited up inside this masculine ideal like it was armor. A small skinny kid, he had a classic Napoleon complex, always thinking he could outrun, outjump, or outfight anyone. After scooping up a diploma from Miami Killian Senior High School, he entered the U.S. Army in 1989. He was in the military when he heard his sister had gotten married.

Joseph says he doesn't remember how the couple met (and Sibylle did not respond to requests for comment for this article), but Ketant was obviously traveling frequently between Miami and Port-au-Prince. The couple eloped, Joseph says. When he finally met his sister's husband, he wasn't impressed.

"My sister was the kind of girl who used to date the captain of the football team. [Jacques Ketant] was just a small, skinny guy," he says. "There are certain people you meet, they could do nothing to you, [but] just the way their mannerisms are, they rub you the wrong way. He was one of those people. He wasn't someone I would hang out with."

The couple moved into a house in West Kendall not far from Claudie, while Edouard, after having seen front-line fighting in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, went to St. John's University in New York City, where he eventually got a degree in economics.

Although he heard occasional snatches of his sister's growing domestic problem, Joseph stayed out of the drama: "My world was college, going to law school, and New York."

In the early 1990s, nothing about Joseph's brother-in-law flagged him as an international drug smuggler. "He had a modest house. He was driving a Toyota 4Runner," Edouard remembers today. "If he was running around like Rick Ross or Diddy, popping bottles, then I might be like, 'Where's this guy getting money?' But honestly, I probably didn't care enough to even ask what he did or anything like that." Joseph says it did not dawn on him that his brother-in-law was a drug kingpin until the 1997 trip to help his sister.

What, if anything, Sibylle knew about her husband's drug business is unclear. Once, in April 1995, U.S. Customs agents in Detroit searched Sibylle and Ketant's sister as the women tried to reenter the country from Japan. They found $40,000 in jewelry. "[L]arge scale narcotics smugglers such as Ketant... launder their narcotics proceeds in various forms, including jewelry," a DEA agent wrote regarding the search in a later affidavit.

Joseph says Sibylle frequently complained to their mother that she was in an abusive relationship, and Claudie would sometimes intervene by talking directly to Ketant. Joseph says Ketant would reply with threats.

"He didn't like the fact that, in his mind, my mom was meddling in his personal business," Joseph says. "Every time they had a conversation, my mom was quick to tell him he wasn't anything, that he needed to learn how to take care of his family, how not to beat on his wife, how to have a viable business. How to be a real man."

For whatever reasons, Sibylle stayed in her marriage. "You could open up any psychology book and see the reasons why battered women go back," Joseph says. "My sister was a textbook example."

Meanwhile, the government's net tightened around Ketant in the mid-1990s. Undercover agents made buys from Ketant's men. Wiretaps caught a discussion about killing snitches.

In May 1996, in New York City, DEA agents uncovered nine kilos of cocaine at the JFK airport. A suspect took off in a car, then bailed out on foot, leaving a briefcase behind. Agents found Ketant's ID in the bag, as well as notebooks listing the names of other members of his crew.

But before agents could grab Ketant, the cocaine dealer made it to Miami and, disguised as a woman, stepped undetected onto a plane headed for Port-au-Prince.

He stayed there. Sibylle stayed in Miami but sent the kids to visit. When Ketant refused to send them home, Joseph would get pulled into the saga when he agreed to make the trip to Haiti with Sibylle.

While the siblings were in Port-au-Prince trying to collect the children on February 10, 1997, Claudie Adams stepped off the sidewalk outside a T.J. Maxx in a shopping center on SW 117th in Kendall at 10:30 in the morning. A cell phone was pressed against her coffee-colored cheek. A masked man got out of a Toyota Paseo, fired twice, and roared off.

Claudie's youngest child, then 12, told investigators he'd overheard his mom having a violent phone conversation with Ketant the day before her killing. It left her grieving sons convinced that Ke­tant had somehow orchestrated the death.

"When the police got there, the first thing they asked my brother was, 'Is there anyone who wanted your mother dead?'?" Joseph recalls. "He said he'd heard her on the phone with [Ketant, who was] saying, 'I'm going to kill you! I'm going to kill you!'?"

Today, Miami-Dade Police Lt. Robert Wilcox, the original lead investigator on the case and now head of the department's cold-case unit, confirms that the investigation focused early on Ketant. "He was in Haiti," he says, but the domestic situation was a factor in the killing. The case remains open, and Wilcox says Ketant's involvement is suspected.

The older brother, then 27, moved back home to take care of his younger sibling, combing through Dr. Spock and other parenting books on raising a child who's experienced trauma. Eventually he had to shelve his plans for law school. Looking back, he says stepping inside the role of mother-father-brother shifted his focus away from Haitian drug dealers and murder.

"The anger is so overwhelming, it will consume you," he says. "I focused on him to squash the anger."

A month after Claudie's murder, a Miami judge granted Sibylle and Ketant a divorce. Yet she later reunited with her husband and moved to Haiti. Joseph, stunned that his sister would return to Ketant despite their mother's murder, stopped speaking to her. "I don't understand it," Joseph says. "I doubt I'll ever understand."

In March 1997, one month after Claudie Adam's death, the 22-count indictment against Ketant, François, and 11 codefendants dropped. The charges included conspiring to distribute cocaine and money laundering. Court documents show that federal agents had teased out a complete picture of the drug operation. Informants linked Ketant to corrupt Haitian military members. Agents had exhaustively tracked couriers carrying cocaine on airline flights. Wiretaps even caught Ketant discussing the possible murder of informers. But despite the slam-dunk evidence, U.S. agents could not secure cooperation from the Haitian government to arrest Ketant.

In fact, following the 1997 indictment, Ketant's business entered its boom years. The drug king literally lived in plain sight.

He built a hilltop mansion — $8 million of white-washed Mediterranean columns and gurgling fountains — that spilled elegantly across the scrub brush in a fancy Port-au-Prince neighborhood. The walls inside were draped with 200 pieces of museum-quality art, including a Monet price-tagged at $1 million. A safe held more than $4 million in cash. A Hummer H-2 and a Cadillac Escalade were often parked in the stone drive.

Ketant's operation evolved. He now hid kilos in the guts of ships bringing cement into the Florida Keys and Miami River. In 2001, Aristide, the man many assumed would be Haiti's savior, once again was elected president. But rather than a period of reform, the priest's return marked the beginning of a great run for traffickers. A 2001 U.S. State Department report concluded that 15 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States came through Haiti — a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Ketant would later admit to moving 2,250 kilograms of cocaine in 2002 and 2003 alone. The business netted him $13 million.

According to an account in journalist Michael Deibert's book Notes From the Last Testament, the kingpin and the new president became intimate during the politician's second term. In 2001 — the same year America's Most Wanted featured a segment on Ketant — the kingpin threw a christening party for Aristide's youngest daughter. Aristide named Ketant her godfather.

But the good life began to slip for Ketant in 2003.

According to federal court records, Ketant usually gave Rudy Therassan, commander of the Haitian National Police and an Aristide confidante, $150,000 to spread among 20 or so officials whenever a smuggler plane needed to touch down on a stretch of highway. In return for safeguarding the drugs on their passage to the United States, Therassan would receive the profits from the stateside sale of 35 kilos from each load.

In early February 2003, Ketant had a plane coming in hauling 2,000 pounds of Colombia's finest. But instead of contracting with Therassan as usual, the kingpin secured protection with another corrupt official — the head of the country's anti-narcotics unit. Therassan was reportedly furious.

Later that month, Ketant's brother and business partner Hector was killed. Therassan claimed Hector had opened fire on police as they attempted to make an arrest, but a confidential informant told U.S. law enforcement that Therassan had personally executed Hector due to the dispute over the drug loads. Another informant said Therassan had received his order to kill Hector from officials in Aristide's government. Whatever the truth, the murder may have marked the moment Ke­tant's time card was punched in the country.

In May 2003, Ketant's nephew's romantic advances were rebuffed by a female classmate at the Union School, a posh private high school favored by wealthy Haitians and diplomats. The nephew, along with Ketant's now-teenaged son, hunted down the boy whom the girl preferred, then proceeded to beat him and stuff him in the trunk of a car. Before the two could drive off campus, a school security guard stopped them. The Ketant boys were expelled. A few days later, Ketant, with goons in tow, burst into the school. Deibert's book reports that the furious drug lord threatened "to have the school burned to the ground and the staff killed."

Apparently for Aristide, Ketant was now a liability. A month later, Ketant was invited to the presidential palace for a meeting. Instead, Therassan arrested the kingpin and turned him over to waiting DEA agents.

Ketant was bound for a Miami courtroom, where he'd finally face the 1997 indictment. In 2004, Ke­tant pleaded guilty. He was given a 27-year sentence and forced to pay $15 million in reparations. But the hearing in Miami was less notable for his punishment than for the drug dealer's statements. Ketant spewed out a 25-minute diatribe aimed at Aristide.

The man is a drug lord," Ketant raged to Federal Judge Federico Moreno, according to the New York Times. "He controlled the drug trade in Haiti. He turned the country into a narco-country."

"I'm not sentencing President Aristide," Moreno said from the bench. "He hasn't been charged."

"Not yet, your honor," the drug smuggler replied. "You will be seeing him pretty soon."

Four days after Ketant's sentencing, unrest drove Aristide from Haiti and into a second exile.

Late on a February afternoon in 2012, a group of lawyers cluttered into a courtroom before Judge Moreno. The court was weighing a motion to reduce the prison time for Jacques Ke­tant, then eight years into his sentence.

"And you want me to reduce his sentence from the 27 years I gave him to what?" the judge asked peering down from the bench.

Lynn Kirkpatrick, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, spoke. "Your honor, from the 324 months, we're asking for a 50 percent reduction."

"Oh, my goodness gracious," Moreno replied.

We are, your honor."

"Wow," the judge continued. "You want more than 50 percent on the most important drug dealer in the conspiracy?" The judge pressed. "You know people got life who were less involved?"

"The 50 percent, your honor, is primarily based on the number of cases that he helped us bring," Kirkpatrick explained. "Quite honestly, your honor, had it not been for Mr. Ketant's cooperation, we would not have been able to successfully prosecute over a dozen major Haitian drug traffickers and so many different members of the administration at the time."

When Ketant landed in U.S. custody, he immediately began serving up information on former friends and associates — including Rudy Therassan, the man who allegedly killed his brother. But it was clear prosecutors were hunting for the biggest game: Aristide.

The ex-president had long been suspected of enabling the drug trade but has never been prosecuted. "He was a target for a long time, and Jacques helped with that," Ketant's attorney, Paul Petruzzi, tells New Times. "I think he also played a very significant role in dismantling some of the then-existing Haitian transportation networks. It was an extraordinary role, and he was awarded an extraordinary recommendation."

But there was one last roadblock before Moreno would issue any walking papers. "I got a copy of this letter from Mr. Edouard Rene Joseph," the judge said. "Do you know who that is?"

The U.S. attorney answered in the negative.

"I think you should read it."

In a two-page missive, Joseph had written: "I lived 2.5 miles from where my mom was shot and have not traveled that way on Sunset and 117th since she was killed. In the past, I drove that way countless times, but I likely never will drive that route again for the rest of my life."

Joseph's request was clear: Don't let Ketant out. "The defendant handed my mother a death sentence and her family and friends a life sentence," he wrote. "Twenty-seven years surely seems lenient considering the punishment this irresponsible man dealt my mother and her friends and family and all innocent victims."

Joseph's letter, as well as questions about why the drug lord hadn't paid any of his $15 million restitution, was enough to slam the brakes on any discussion of Ketant's early release in 2012. Moreno kept him in custody and asked the U.S. attorney to further investigate the possible links to the murder. From his prison cell, Ketant responded with his own letter to the judge.

"Concerning the letter sent to the court by my ex-brother-in-law," Ketant wrote, "this is pure fabrication, hatred, jealousy, and envy, a conspiracy between his sister (Sibylle Joseph) my ex-wife, himself, and other unknown persons who will not like to see me coming home to my family and my children.

"She was living with me in Haiti for almost 5 years, from 1999 until my expel [sic] in 2003," the cocaine smuggler wrote. "If she thought that I had anything to do with her mother's death, I don't think she will move to Haiti and stay with me after her mother was assassinated in 1997."

Ketant also hinted that his former mother-in-law was herself involved in "illegal" activity that could have led to her end. The kingpin's attorney is more blunt: "Claudie herself was a drug dealer for a long time and a money launderer," Petruzzi asserts. "So there's no shortage of people who didn't like her."

Joseph scoffs at the accusation. Law enforcement also doesn't buy it. "We have no facts that she was involved in that business," says Miami Dade Police's Wilcox.

But earlier this year, the government again asked for a sentence reduction for Ketant, and Moreno granted it in April. Ketant was released from prison into the hands of immigration officials. Currently, he's trying to fight deportation back to Haiti, where he could face reprisals for ratting out corrupt officials.

Sibylle Joseph is now 47 and relocated to Virginia. Her two children are now in their 20s and remain in South Florida, Joseph says. François hid in Honduras for years but was eventually sent to prison in Haiti. Aristide, who has always denied his involvement in the drug trade, returned to Haiti in 2011 after a seven-year exile in Africa. The politician remains a popular figure in the country.

In 2000, Joseph started a successful beauty-product company called Prince­reigns. Today, his corner office in Boca Raton is covered with grip-and-grin photos of the company founder with an array of big names — Russell Simmons, Jay Z, even Barack Obama. Outside of photos of his wife and four kids, there aren't many family artifacts. The past remains a difficult subject.

Joseph says he's unhappy about Ke­tant's release but resigned to the realpolitik of the drug war. "[U.S. attorneys] probably feel they owe him something: You scratched my back, and now it's my turn to reciprocate," he says. "What they have to realize is these people are the cretins of the world; they're bottom feeders. You really owe them much of nothing."

Yet Ketant's release — and the end of his usefulness to U.S. prosecutors — may have given Miami-Dade detectives the opening they've been waiting for. Within the past six months, investigators have interviewed Ketant regarding the murder.

"There was a tremendous amount of dynamics going on with Ketant and the State Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office," Wilcox says. "[But] now the case is pretty active. We are confident we're moving in the right direction."

http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-haitian-drug-lord-jacques-ketant-7001667

The Big Hen: Regional enforcer of Gangster Disciples gets 30 years in prison for decades-long crime career http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...rcer-of-gangster-disciples-gets-30-years

As many as 100,000 Nigerians are now in the United States. Nearly half of them originally entered the United States with nonimmigrant (temporary) foreign student visas. Citing Nigerian sources, U.S. law enforcement officials estimate that 75 to 90 percent of them have been involved in an impressive and innovative variety of fraud schemes, often using extensive Nigerian networks across the country. Nigerian crime in 1989 was estimated to cost the United States $1 billion. Law enforcement officials consider New York and Houston the hubs of Nigerian criminal activity, with significant problems also existing in Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles and the Washington-Baltimore area.
The Nigerian mafia is well organized and sophisticated. Investigators have uncovered 'classes' where earlier Nigerian settlers train newcomers to the U.S. in the subtle arts of credit card, banking and insurance fraud and keep up to date on new techniques. Police have discovered phony Nigerian companies that exist only to reply to credit inquiries and provide references and employment confir-mation. A network of cells of three to fifteen members each have been found. Each cell of 'boys' usually has an identifiable leader who acts as recruiter and trainer of new members, most of whom are found on college campuses. Unlike traditional organized crime, however, Nigerian organizations make no territorial claims, are highly mobile, and display no clear hierarchy.
Here are some of the Nigerian mafia's most common, and most lucrative, criminal practices
* Immigration and Citizenship Fraud The most common ploy is providing false information to get a visa from the American consul in Nigeria. This may involve the purchase from a corrupt U.S. college administrator of Form I-20, essential for admission to the U.S. as a student. Phony bank or employment records are used to prove the financial support required for the visa. Nigerians have frequently used sham marriages to U.S. citizens, claims of birth in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and counterfeit U.S. passports. Since Nigerian passports are issued with little documentary evidence of identity, many Nigerians have two or more under different aliases to facilitate fraud here.
* Identification Fraud In the wide open U.S.A., the resourceful Nigerian has little problem in obtaining enough birth certificates, social security cards and driver's licenses to accompany each identity used. Often valid social security numbers of others are lifted from stolen company personnel documents. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which controls license issuance more carefully than most states, found in 1989 that one Nigerian, Adedotun Kuku, had six different licenses. Four of his aliases used English surnames and one a Hispanic surname. Virtuosity at driver's license fraud led Nigerian networks into large scale resale of licenses to other aliens, often by bribery of state motor vehicle officials, along with their own versions of bogus social security cards and birth certificates.
* Bank and Credit Card Fraud Stolen or fraudulently obtained credit cards are used for quick, large scale purchases of goods - for resale or for export to Nigeria - and then passed on to others in distant cities. High mobility has made investigations more difficult. Sometimes the line of credit is maintained by paying the account with kited or cold checks. Similarly, to obtain an Automated Teller (ATM) card, bank accounts are opened with the help of an American and with a cold check as initial deposit. Telephone credit card fraud is another Nigerian innovation. Stolen or fraudulently obtained phone credit cards and PIN numbers are used to sell reduced rate international calls to fellow Nigerians or other emigres.
The Nigerian mafia has engaged boldly in check forgery. In the late 1980s, a Nigerian mafia scheme to pass $30 million worth of counterfeit American Express travelers checks was broken up after $2 million were passed successfully. Printing plants in Florida and California were seized. Fraudulent letters of credit from Nigerian banks passed by prospective Nigerian 'investors' or 'export-import executives' have plagued some U.S. banks. Police in New York found Nigerians working for financial institutions and assisting other Nigerians to defraud those institutions.
* Welfare and Food Stamp Fraud The huge U.S. structure of entitlements remains an easy mark for Nigerians, who have little trouble mustering evidence of U.S. citizenship. Assistance programs for which eligibility is monitored by state governments have been particularly vulnerable. The continuing deadlock in Congress and the courts over whether to bar ineligible aliens from subsidized housing programs opens the door still further to widespread abuse by Nigerians, with little apparent concern by municipal housing authorities. The INS reported in 1985 that not only Nigerians, but migrants from neighboring West African nations, Ghana and Liberia '....are abusing our entitlement systems in a most organized and effective way.'
* Student Loan Fraud During the 1980s, Nigerians led the pack in gaining U.S. guaranteed student loans. The ease and simplicity of their success spotlights the incredible inefficiency of U.S. controls. They simply applied and listed themselves as U.S. citizens. For a good while, banking officials just took their word for it, as the loans were insured by the federal government in any event. As the rising default rate among those with Nigerian names began to raise questions, many Nigerians applied under English surname aliases. Multiple applications for student aid are not uncommon, though the Department of Education tightened procedures somewhat in the late 1980s. A Nigerian in the Baltimore area was found to have fifteen student loan accounts at three different schools, totalling $42,000. In a Chicago-area case, four members of the same family illegally obtained over $60,000 in student aid, lived in subsidized housing and received food stamps.
* Insurance Fraud is remarkable for its ingenuity, variety and chutzpa. Life insurance is taken out on someone who then 'dies' in Nigeria. Providing the required death certificate is no problem. Phony car accidents are staged, along with thefts of goods that don't exist or that have been dispatched to Nigeria. Claims for fictitious lost baggage and personal injuries abound.
* Heroin Trafficking has become increasingly lucrative for the Nigerian networks. Most of the heroin is originally purchased in Pakistan and India and shipped to the U.S. through Nigeria or Europe, often using female couriers. The Washington-Baltimore area has been a preferred entry and sales region for Nigerian traffickers.
In the current surge of alien crime, the United States has seen such immigrant groups as Colombians, Dominicans, Jamaicans and Salvadorans unusually prone to criminal involvement. Unlike those groups, Nigerian immigrants represent their country's privileged elites, English-speaking and with educational achievement significantly above the immigrant average. Education may work to turn its immigrant possessors from crime over the long term, but for the Nigerians, it apparently has made them more adept at capitalizing on the trusting character of American institutions and the weakness of the country's identification procedures.
We can only speculate about the motives of the Nigerian over-achiever turned criminal. The culture from which he springs is notorious for corruption and non-existent business ethics, even by African standards. The openness and innocence of the U.S. way of doing things presents an irresistible appeal to the newcomer from a society where corner-cutting is a way of life. One indicted Nigerian bad check artist told investigators in 1985 that Nigerian students are forced into crime to pay their bills. He held the U.S government responsible for Nigerian crime because 'immigration regulations prevent students from working and scholarship payments are slow coming from Nigeria.'
However self-serving, such comments confirm that U.S. Consuls have been doing a poor job of testing the financial solvency of seekers of student visas. Once the Nigerians arrive and take on criminal ways, the INS lacks the personnel or funds to locate and remove them. Law enforcement officers continue to complain of an ineffective deportation process - though there has been some improvement since special criminal aliens legislation was enacted in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, appeals and other procedures can take years, allowing criminals additional time to commit crimes and assume new identities. Cases continue to turn up in which deported Nigerians have returned to the United States, in itself a felony, and resumed their criminal careers.
The Need for Identification Safeguards
Finally, the ease with which Nigerians have found the cracks in U.S. identification safeguards points up how defenseless many American institutions are - and unnecessarily so. The unwillingness of banks, for example, to share information on cardholders allows many persons to use the same identifying information to obtain cards. Financial institutions often do not verify information provided on credit card applications. State govern-ment social assistance agencies, and some federal ones, check perfunctorily, or not at all, on the citizenship status of applicants for costly assistance programs. One cause is the continuing tendency of service providers to think of screening and enforcement as 'not their job.' The INS entitlements verification system (SAVE) legislated in 1986 checks only those applicants who own up to being non-citizens. The INS data base ostensibly covering all the nation's aliens still contains many omissions, and the Social Security Administration has consistently refused to provide the data that would strengthen the system.
States issue drivers' licenses without verifying legal immigrant status - only three states now bar illegal aliens from licenses - and allow officials little time to check suspect ID documents. The prospective passage of 'Motor-Voter legislation' will place new burdens on motor vehicle administrators, but may have the benefit of conditioning them to be more attentive to applicants' citizenship status. No major breakthrough against false identity is likely until the states impose much higher security standards on the issuance of birth certificates and drivers' licenses. The rapidly advancing technology of biometric identification gives the states a capacity to obtain a unique and permanent identification fix on 175 million holders of drivers' licenses and state ID cards and future applicants for them. Similar techniques would permit federal tracking of the more than one million illegal aliens arrested or cited yearly. New developments in automated fingerprint ID systems make possible the computer coding, storage and comparison of hundreds of millions of prints. Persons arriving on these shores may still give a false identity, but with biometrics that person will be locked into a single identity for a lifetime. �
[This article was based in part on reports and exhibits of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Congress; on The Nigerian Mafia, a 1989 study by the Los Angeles Police Department; and on data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.]

Southern Blacks have been engaged in racketeering activities a little longer than those outside the South. Mainly Bootlegging, Gambling, & Prostitution. More to come.

The Black underworld in the South haven't received much historical research compared to Midwestern, East Coast , and a minor degree to West Coast sections. The Black bootleggers of prohibition had setup shop in neighborhoods of small towns and large cities via mom & pop stores, gas stations, motels, clubs & hole in the wall joints especially. Using these businesses as a front to sell to their clientele and bribe/kickback a portion of their earnings to the local sheriffs/police in their area. Mississippi is well known for having a long history of bootlegging/moonshining with prohibition ending in 1966. Major hubs for the bootlegging racket in Mississippi was the Delta, River towns next to Louisiana border, Gulf Coast & Gold Coast ( Rankin County area known as East Jackson). Black bootleggers was known to network with white bootleggers despite the racist climate of that time. A Gold Coast hotel operated by 2 Black brothers had doubled as a nightclub with bootlegging and gambling activities as well.

Illegal gambling have been a major racket in the Black underworld of the South with Policy/Numbers being active in New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, & other locations. In Nashville's Black underworld the racketeers gain significant prominence with political backing. Even in the 1960s it was mentioned in a Nashville paper that there was a dozen or so Black Kingpins netting millions from the numbers racket. Nashville' s history with Numbers racket lasted a long time until the city legalized the lottery in 2004. Atlanta authorities referred to the policy/numbers racket as the Bug racket, everytime one shutdown another opens and numerous, and it tended to be highly competitive between different enterprises often engaging in conflicts over business. New Orleans Black underworld was fill with policy wheels. Some Black underworld locations preferred cards/dice games than polucy/numbers such as Mississippi cities. Overall, During the 1920s-1960s the most lucrative rackets waa Bootlegging, Gambling, and lesser degree Prostitution. As the 1950s to 1990s arrived so does a shift in rackets takes place. Mainly drug trafficking along with gun trafficking & fraud.

Drug Trade grew to replace bootlegging and gambling as a major racket in Southern Black underworlds. New Orleans had Black drug kingpins as early as the mid 50s with the New Orleans crime family taking a back seat to the drug trafficking. Black traffickers was traveling to Chicago for the source and dealing to other local traffickers. The locations of New Orleans heroin market shifted to the housing projects in central city. DTOs & local crews proliferated in the city during the 60s-90s. Atlanta, Houston, & Miami continues to be well known distribution hubs and many Black racketeers in these locations gained large revenues and network with other traffickers from different Black underworlds. One of the most common links Southern Black underworlds share with the other regional Black underworlds is the historic migration. The racketeers know how to engage in certain cities in part to family connections in which allow a flow of racketeering activities between different regions.

What's the reason for "gang banging" in African American hoods/gangs? Is it personal/turf/vs crew vs crew etc. or what? I never really understood or dared to dig into the American gang life like the cartels and simply went with the simplification of these gangs by the general public and on these forums.

The reason for it is highly personal vendetta and/or money. It seems to be overgeneralized that every conflict involves turf or is even gangbanging at alll. Sometimes people and media automatically label a domestic violence situation involving gang members as gang-related and/or gangbanging.

https://newtelegraphonline.com/2018...ected-mafia-gang-kills-another-nigerian/

Aren't a lot of supposed " gangster " rappers simply actor musicians who happen to act out some of their lyrical content in real life though ? This is a topic unto itself , but I was actually watching a documentary about so called gangster rappers in contemporary Chicago the other day , and pretty much all the fellows in it fit that description .

Of course I could be wrong , but I highly doubt actual black gangsters would engage in that kind of attention seeking behavior , especially ones of Jeff Fort caliber .

Prison bars couldn’t stop powerful Godfathers of United Blood Nation as they directed violent gang war http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...-powerful-godfathers-of-united-blood-nat

Well many gangsters are ine the backround.
People like Harry O, Kato, Supreme and others.
Even Larry Hoover call some executives like J.Prince.
Some rappers are gangsters, but the real one are the one in the shadow. Rap industry is a big money laudering machine.

There's tons of drug money laundered through the rap industry. Street gangs have a bit of a "not to be taken serious" reputation when it comes to the organized side of crime, but there's definitely more than a few (street) smart criminals among them.

Speaking about the East Coast Bloods (UBN); is it just me or do they have a sizable amount of Puerto Ricans in their ranks?

“Corey Hamlet is as smart as any CEO we’ve prosecuted” – Profile of Grape Street Crips leader Corey Hamlet http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...as-any-ceo-we-ve-prosecuted-profile-of-g

New York Times exposes 90 ‘mafia-style’ ANC murders over two years

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/n...-mafia-style-anc-murders-over-two-years/

In Canada, the Jamaican shower posse work behind the scene, does anyone knows thier current status in america

He [Rikidozan] was also heavily tied in to the Yakuza, which ultimately led to his murder. Over disagreements about money and control of the wrestling business, Rikidozan had angered the wrong people. A Yakuza member urinated on a knife, to make sure it would cause an infection, and stabbed Rikidozan in the stomach in a night club hallway. After the stabbing, Rikidozan beat the shit out of the guy who stabbed him while the crowd cheered and then threw the guy out of the club. He then got on stage, announced he'd been stabbed and acted like it was no big thing and continued partying and drinking with a crowd of adoring fans. But he made a fatal mistake by not getting medical attention, contracted peritonitis from the dirty knife, and got an infection and died a week later. His death nearly killed the entire wrestling industry in Japan, especially after the real stories about his life became known to the public (they all worshiped Rikidozan as a sports hero and in reality, he was basically a merciless mob boss who was into a lot of shady shit). Most major arenas no longer allowed pro wrestling and with the biggest star ever dead, the business nearly died with him until Giant Baba and, later, Inoki revived it during the JWA years in the late-1960s.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCir...he_book_the/?st=jnbx9mzb&sh=4c9102de

They are supposed to be well established in Toronto, but they are low key. They are probably also present in cities like new york and miami.
Since the arrest of Coke, we are earing less about them.

Since the 1980s, Nigerian organised crime has migrated around the world. They established strong roots in Italy and, from the 1990s, in parts of South Africa. Valentina Pancieri, postgraduate researcher and police officer on sabbatical, is investigating the motivations for migration of Nigerian organised crime into these two nations.

Throughout history, there have been factors that force or motivate criminal organisations to move. These range from new opportunities and competition to the threat of law enforcement.

The birth and initial migration of Nigerian organised crime are closely linked to three historical events, says Pancieri, who is in her second year of PhD research in the Institute for Safety Governance and Criminology.

The first is the discovery of oil in the 1950s that resulted in a surge of wealth and accompanying corruption. The second is the economic depression in the 1980s and the third, widespread corruption. These three events meant many skilled Nigerians migrated in search of employment opportunities.

As legal operations moved along with ordinary immigrants, so organised crime moved with its role-players.

“It is very important to note that not all Nigerian immigrants are involved in crime,” says Pancieri. “Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa so it has a greater chance of having a higher number of people involved in criminal activities.”

Those Nigerian criminals were quick to learn from their counterparts in the host nation, modernising operations and building on existing networks.

Many unemployed graduates with good IT skills took advantage of the information boom in the 1990s, and became leading players in cybercrime as the notorious ‘419ers’.

So began Nigerian transnational crime.

From organised crime to Italian mafiosi

In Italy, Nigerian criminal groups are allegedly establishing successful partnerships with native mafia families. They are thought to be adopting the structure and operational methods of the families, using intimidation to run their businesses and seeking to govern both legal and illicit enterprises through criminal protection.

Nigerian criminal groups have been so successful in mimicking the notorious families that Italian police started addressing them as ‘mafia’.

Pancieri agrees with her native police force, saying that they tick many of the boxes for organised crime: an active structure, sustained international partnerships and a well-planned criminal strategy.

The move to South Africa

Another country in which Nigerian mafia became established was South Africa.

“Crime moves when there are push and pull factors in place,” says Pancieri.

In addition to the ‘forced migration’ of Nigerian political and economic instability, Pancieri lists new or booming markets and a demand for mafia services as motivations to move.

The arrival of a large number of Nigerian immigrants to South Africa began in the mid-1990s as the country was undergoing its transition from apartheid to democracy. With their home country in turmoil, South Africa proved easy to enter due to Nigeria’s contribution to the liberation struggle.

New markets and a demand for mafia services

In Italy, the families had satisfied the demand for many illegal services, but Nigerian organised crime established themselves through the demand for Nigerian prostitutes. In South Africa, Nigerian syndicates first established themselves in Johannesburg in the late 1990s. As a virgin territory for organised crime, it was well suited to establish a new criminal venture, bringing in cocaine and crack.

In that period, nightclubs started hiring Nigerian bouncers as security, replacing white ones who were more prone to violence and attracted unwanted police attention. This acted as a marketing asset for the Nigerians involved in drugs, who could enlarge their market through selling in clubs.

While Nigerians never controlled the security industry, through their established South American contacts, they began importing cocaine, which is not produced in South Africa and for which local criminals had very few contacts.

Nigerians soon established themselves as controllers of the cocaine and crack supply chain.

To this day, cocaine is still not available in large quantities on the South African market and Johannesburg remains the headquarters for Nigerian illicit activities in South Africa.

Friends and family

In addition to markets and demands, “ethnic ties are very important to the way crime moves”, says Pancieri.

According to her research, Nigerian mafia will, prior to establishing themselves in the host country, seek out and join those with a shared background.

“You want to do business – legal and illegal – with people from your culture and language,” she says.

Territory

The presence of established criminal organisations serves as a deterrent for Nigerian mafia. In Cape Town, gangs control the Cape Flats, feeding its supply of cheaper, more addictive drugs –predominantly to impoverished communities.

“You won’t find Nigerian syndicates selling drugs on the Cape Flats,” says Pancieri. “Nigerian criminals do not appear to want to fight.”

How to curb Nigerian mafia
Instead, when they first arrived in Cape Town, Nigerians set up shops in the affluent and relatively gang-free Sea Point to expand their business into the drug trade and sex trafficking.

But they did not stay there. Through collaboration between police, law enforcement and the local neighbourhood watch, Nigerian syndicates were pushed out of Sea Point, forcing them to find a new stronghold in the city’s northern suburbs.

The Sea Point case demonstrated South African police’s ability to break organised crime.

“But it is not an easy structure to eradicate,” says Pancieri. “You need to be trained, equipped and conducting wiretapping investigations. You need to be monitoring people.”

Pancieri, who is a police officer herself, stresses the need for dedication and patience. “You need to understand who does what, how they enter the country and what motivates them to come,” she says.

Pancieri hopes that the understanding that results from her research will strengthen transnational police operations in their fight against Nigerian crime, and enable judiciary systems and social support agencies in their work with criminals, criminal networks and victims.

“Until something related to police intelligence work is done, Nigerian criminal syndicates will always be successful,” she says

https://www.unodc.org/pdf/transnational_crime_west-africa-05.pdf

PDF about west africa organized crime

I shared this information in a thread a few years ago.

Its really a good one.
I’m trying to find one like this, but in the caribbean.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=ES...ribbean%20drug%20trafficking&f=false

Lucky Number 7: Longtime drug trafficker sentenced in multi-state cocaine, marijuana pipeline http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...drug-trafficker-sentenced-in-multi-state

investigations have revealed that weapons from Haiti, including some belonging to the National Police, have been found in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Venezuela, or Mexico in the hands of drug lords.

https://rezonodwes.com/vladimir-par...c3yWAvUmPUSsdk9kbMKcZc3Z_IeGZ8PmwNhUEgVo

How the DEA let one of Haiti’s biggest drug busts slip through its fingers

PORT-AU-PRINCE
The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship pulled into a privately owned Haitian port in broad daylight with a secret buried under a mountain of imported sugar: 700 to 800 kilos of cocaine and 300 kilos of heroin with an estimated U.S. street value of $100 million.

When longshoremen started unloading the bags of sugar, they stumbled across the hidden stash — and a lawless free-for-all unfolded. Bags of drugs were grabbed by a host of people, including police officers who sped up to the docks in cars with tinted windows, according to a Haiti police report obtained by the Miami Herald and confirmed by an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

By the time a squad of Haiti narcotics police officers arrived at the dock two hours later, most of the drugs were gone.

The sugar boat haul in April 2015 should have been exactly the kind of smuggling operation that DEA agents and Haiti’s narcotics police were prepared to take down. But today, more than three years after the MV Manzanares docked at the Terminal Varreux port in Cité Soleil, the only person behind bars is a low-level longshoreman, awaiting trial on drug smuggling charges. No one in authority — neither Haiti’s anti-drug police nor the DEA — has been held accountable for the missing drugs on the sugar boat.

The bungling of the investigation in Haiti didn’t even come to light until two veteran DEA agents filed whistle-blower complaints that have triggered a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the effectiveness of the DEA’s drug-fighting efforts in the impoverished country. An initial review by the Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency, took two years and recently found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” in the DEA’s Haiti Country Office. That resulted in an automatic referral to Attorney General Jeff Sessions for an investigation by the Justice Department.

There are other inquiries into the DEA office in Haiti, too.

The DEA agents’ complaints, filed in 2016, have attracted the attention of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who called the allegations “substantial.” Both requested a Justice Department probe. In addition, two separate criminal investigations into the Manzanares smuggling case are also under way — one by Haitian authorities, the other by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

In the whistle-blower complaints, the two agents lay out a list of allegations, blaming their own office along with Haiti’s narcotics police for security failures at Haiti’s ports that they said have allowed drugs to flow through the country long before the Manzanares incident. They say thousands of kilos of cocaine and other drugs had been passing through Haiti undetected for years, en route to the United States. They also accuse DEA supervisors in the Haiti office of corruption, misconduct and even collusion with the former head of the country’s anti-drug unit, which is called the Brigade in the Fight Against Narcotics Trafficking, or BLTS.

Their scathing accusations suggest that the U.S. government has wasted U.S. taxpayers’ money with little to show for it. The U.S. pays for the DEA’s operations in Port-au-Prince and has invested more than $250 million in Haiti’s roughly 15,000-member police force in the past eight years. About $18.7 million of that amount has gone for training and other resources for the Haitian police 300-member narcotics unit but nothing for seaport security in Port-au-Prince.

Both longtime DEA agents — the Miami Herald is not naming them because whistle-blower laws protect the identities of federal workers who disclose government wrongdoing — said they see the Varreux port incident as a missed opportunity and part of a larger failure of the U.S. war on drugs in Haiti.

“The vessel was a demonstration of the corruption of BLTS, apathy of the U.S. government and exploitation by the drug traffickers,” one of the agents told the Herald.

The DEA’s recently appointed special agent in charge of the Caribbean division, A.J. Collazo, insisted in an interview last month that the eight-person office in Port-au-Prince has collaborated effectively with Haiti’s anti-drug officers to slow the flow of cocaine and other narcotics into the U.S.

“We’re there to fight narcotics trafficking,” he said. “We’re not there to allow it to happen or to sit back and not do anything about it.”

He laid responsibility for the Manzanares case on Haiti alone. He said of the DEA: “I don’t know if it was a case that we were looking to make.”

That viewpoint isn’t shared by at least one other U.S. law enforcement agency. The Herald has learned that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami is considering whether to file drug-trafficking charges in connection with the Manzanares smuggling operation based on evidence gathered by one of the whistle-blower DEA agents, who believes the drugs were destined for Florida. The U.S. Attorney’s Office wouldn’t confirm that, or say whether there is a U.S. investigation into the Manzanares at all.

But a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard, which helped Haitian police search for the drugs, said the sugar boat case “is still an open [federal] investigation.”

Blowing the whistle
The whistle-blowers’ allegations, coupled with interviews and documents obtained by the Herald, paint a picture of a DEA office in Haiti operating with little oversight as supervisory agents allowed what might have been the biggest drug bust in Haiti in a decade to slip through their fingers.

The agents, who have a combined 40 years with the DEA, say their agency should have done a thorough investigation into drugs on the Manzanares but those efforts were stymied by their supervisors — even though one of the agents says he had collected evidence showing that the ship’s cocaine and heroin loads were destined for the U.S.

When they tried to reduce the flow of drugs from Haiti by improving seaport security, the two DEA agents say they also suffered from retaliation. One said he was placed on bathroom escort duty at the U.S. Embassy; the other said he was harassed so badly by his immediate commander that he suffered severe health problems. Their lawyers said the agents want to force the agency to change what they called a lax approach to fighting drug smuggling in Haiti.

The whistle-blower complaints, meanwhile, have been winding through a web of government regulation. The Office of Special Counsel’s referral to Sessions happened in May. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General or the DEA’s internal affairs office would handle the resulting probe. Neither agency would comment on the status of the case.

Lawyer Tom Devine, legal director for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington, D.C., that represents federal employees with whistle-blower complaints, said his group is encouraged by the special counsel’s referral of the complaints to the Justice Department.

“It means … [the special counsel] agrees the concerns likely are a serious breach of the public trust, which must be investigated and acted on,” Devine said.

This spring, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Rubio also had asked for a DOJ investigation. House members had expressed their disappointment with the DEA’s internal handling of the complaints, and wanted an independent agency to review the allegations.

Rubio, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said he is concerned about what he says is a “substantial amount” of cocaine bound for Florida that’s moving through Haiti with impunity as South American traffickers look for routes beyond Central America and Mexico.

“Traffickers are always looking for new routes,” he said. “And if word gets out that routes have been established because key individuals are compromised, it’s going to attract more people to jump on that route.”

‘Sugar boat’ bust
When the Manzanares docked in Haiti on April 5, 2015, it had already spent three days anchored off the bay of Port-au-Prince, according to the Haiti National Police investigative report. The 371-foot freighter was coming from Buenaventura, Colombia, with a 13-member crew and pulled into Terminal Varreux. More than 24 hours passed before Haitian customs arrived to clear the ship.

Routine cargo unloading began — until the discovery of the hidden packages of cocaine and heroin. Arguments over the drugs started in the cargo hold, then spread to the docks. Witnesses later told Haitian police they saw bags of drugs whisked away in vehicles — specifically, a white Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows driven by what witnesses said was a Haitian police officer assigned to the National Palace and a yellow Nissan XTerra driven by a special tactical police officer who was accompanied by another officer. One of the whistle-blowers also said some of the drugs were even stolen by a judge.

One of the DEA agents described the scene: “You have all of these folks running in there trying to get their fill.”

For two hours, though, no Haiti police officers were on the scene. It wasn’t until 5:30 p.m. that Haiti’s anti-drug unit — alerted by a Varreux port manager to the frenzy — showed up and then notified the DEA in Port-au-Prince, according to Haitian officials. For several days, the Haitian narcotics officers were unable to find the drugs, even with the help of two K-9 dogs.

“It was just a bunch of guys standing around not knowing what to do,” said the DEA agent, who was at the port the day after the fight broke out. He noted that the Haitian officers didn’t even know how to board the boat, much less search it: “[They] had never done it.”

The Haitian police investigative report acknowledged that “there probably was a quantity of drugs that was removed during the first hours” of the unloading of the ship on the afternoon of April 6. A source familiar with the case also said that at least some of the drugs were diverted from the boat, beginning the night before when the Manzanares was docked.

The DEA and Haiti investigators believe that the Manzanares held as much as 800 kilos of cocaine and 300 kilos of heroin, based on intelligence and the capacity of the ship’s secret hold.

“We are talking about a well-planned set-up intended to recover the drugs as quickly as possible,” the Haiti police report said. It described the scheme as “strategic and well-calculated.”

After days of being unable to find any trace of the drugs, Haitian police called for assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami. Together, they eventually found a fraction of the suspected stash — about 109 kilos of cocaine and almost 16 kilos of heroin — still concealed on the ship.

“The cocaine and heroin that was seized would not have been found were it not for the U.S. Coast Guard ... team,” said Marilyn Fajardo, the U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami.

There has been no accounting for the rest of the drugs that went missing from the ship, which has been seized by the Haitian government. But the whistle-blower agents say they suspect a now-former commander of the Haiti anti-drug unit, Joris Mergelus, was involved. They accuse him of taking bribes to hinder the investigation by Haitian police of the drug-laden ship. They also believe that Mergelus had given kickbacks to a DEA supervisor in the past from funds for confidential sources, equipment and other expenses. Mergelus also had previously failed two lie-detector tests given by the DEA about his relationship with drug dealers, they say.

Mergelus strongly denied any links to drug traffickers. In an interview with the Herald, he said the litany of allegations “truly surprises me” and that he believes he’s being made into the fall guy for what is really an internal conflict among DEA agents in Haiti. He challenged the claim that he had failed the polygraph tests.

“If I didn’t pass, why did they accept me as head of BLTS?” said Mergelus, who joined the narcotics unit in 1997 and became its commander in 2011. “All the big drug arrests in Haiti, I did.”

Mergelus was removed from the command post in 2017 by Haiti’s new police chief, at the insistence of the DEA’s new Haiti Country Office chief, but he remains on the police force.

Haiti police Inspector Normil Rameau, who oversaw the anti-drug unit and its investigation into the Manzanares case, did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment about the allegations involving Mergelus. Rameau was removed from the post late last month but promoted days later by outgoing Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant to Haiti’s Washington embassy, according to an Aug. 1 letter signed by Lafontant.

To the DEA whistle-blowers, the Manzanares smuggling operation is just one more symptom of an ongoing problem: a high volume of drugs coursing through Haiti’s seaports and the country’s inability to stem it. They point to Haiti’s anti-drug police, who they say should have received port security training and had no idea of how to properly search a ship. They note that the police force had an office at the nearby government port in Port-au-Prince — but not at Terminal Varreux, which the whistle-blowers believe has become a hub for drug shipments between Colombia and the United States.

“There was absolutely no understanding of the most basic concept of how to do the seaport enforcement,” said one of the whistle-blower agents. “Nobody from the BLTS had the slightest inkling on what they were doing at that seaport. ... They were just completely clueless.”

The Manzanares smuggling operation wasn’t even particularly sophisticated. There were no anti-drug police at Terminal Varreux to circumvent. Newly installed video cameras weren’t even operating at the privately owned port.

Miami attorney Joel Hirschhorn, who represents members of the Mevs family that owns Terminal Varreux, said the port’s security has not been loose. The family even paid to build a BLTS substation at the port in 2017, he said. But that was two years after the Manzanares incident.

“The allegations that the port has ‘lax security’ and that illegal substances have been freely flowing are false as proven by the port’s security records,” Hirschhorn said in a statement. “[Terminal Varreux] has one of the tightest security operations of Haitian ports.”


Porous borders
But in general, Haiti’s seaports, airports and border security efforts are weak, the State Department says.

“Drug seizures still remain low, and Haiti’s minimal capacity to police its sea and land borders is a particular point of concern,” according to a 2018 international narcotics strategy report by the department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL.

Until five years ago, the major drug-smuggling threat to Haiti had been Colombian traffickers flying cocaine onto makeshift landing strips and making airdrops off the coast. Today, the greater challenge is maritime trafficking along Haiti’s vast 1,100-mile coastline, according to the report.

The Haitian Coast Guard, which has primary responsibility for the country’s territorial waters, lacks funding, management skills and fuel supplies — and only has five working vessels, the report said, adding that Coast Guard has failed to serve as “an effective deterrent force to maritime drug trafficking.”

But Haiti’s second line of defense against drugs — seaport security in Port-au-Prince and other areas — has been equally porous because of a lack of basic training of Haitian police officers. While the INL has spent $18.7 million since 2010 on supporting Haiti’s anti-drug police and coast guard operations, the agency has provided “limited funding” for more specialized training — only $500,000. Only a fraction of that money has gone to seaport security training, an INL spokesperson said.

And that’s the root of Haiti’s persistent drug-smuggling problem, according to the whistle-blower agents: the DEA’s failure to properly train anti-drug officers on vessel inspections in Port-au-Prince and other key ports. The agents complained not only about corruption among Haitian police officers but also said there was a “vacuum” in seaport enforcement during evenings and weekends.

“There was no underlying [counternarcotics] law enforcement program in Haiti for seaport smuggling,” one of the agents asserted.

Rameau, the former Haiti police inspector, did not respond to a request for comment on seaport security training for Haiti’s anti-drug police.

Last year, Haiti’s anti-drug officers seized only 48 kilos of cocaine, while the U.S. Coast Guard confiscated about twice that amount in and outside of the country’s territorial waters. Haiti also arrested 110 suspects for drug-related crimes, but only a few were actually prosecuted because of the country’s notoriously dysfunctional justice system, the 2018 INL report said.

Only one “high-value target” was turned over to U.S. authorities in 2017: Guy Philippe, an elusive former Haitian police commander who had led a rebellion against then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Philippe had been on the lam for almost 12 years before DEA agents, in collaboration with the Haiti National Police, nabbed him.

Philippe was brought to the U.S. and pleaded guilty to a drug-related money-laundering charge. He is serving nine years in federal prison. The investigation into Philippe grew out of the 2003 expulsion from Haiti of drug kingpin Beaudoin “Jacques” Ketant and the subsequent extraditions of Haitian police officers, politicians and others. All but one were convicted for allowing drugs to be transported through Haiti to the U.S.

In contrast, most other drug-trafficking cases investigated by the DEA in Haiti and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office during the past decade have been small-time operations involving low-profile Haitian dealers moving lighter loads of cocaine, Miami court records show.

A.J. Collazo, the special agent who took over the DEA’s Caribbean division in January, dismissed the idea that the agency isn’t doing its job in Haiti and questioned the relevance of the Manzanares sugar boat case to the United States. Haitian police made the seizure at the Varreux port, he said, and its judicial system took responsibility for prosecution.

“I don’t know if there was any intel that it was going to the U.S. as part of a DEA case,” Collazo said. “This sounds to me like it was something that was being prosecuted in Haiti and is going to end in Haiti.”

The Haiti case seems to be grinding to a halt. A Haitian investigative judge who oversaw the sugar boat case dismissed most of the initial suspects, including the 13-member Manzanares crew and one member of the prominent Mevs family, Jean Fritz Bernard Mevs.

In 2016, a Haitian judge charged a handful of suspects with drug trafficking: businessmen Marc Antoine Acra and Sébastien François Xavier Acra, the brothers who owned the company, NABATCO, that commissioned the sugar shipment from Colombia. The port’s foreman, Fedner “Supris” Doliscar, was also indicted along with longshoreman Grégory Georges.

Marc Antoine Acra told the Herald he’s innocent and deflected the accusations, saying that investigators aren’t going after the real traffickers. The well-known businessman, even as he was under investigation in the Manzanares case, was appointed a Haiti Goodwill Ambassador by former President Michel Martelly.

In April, a three-judge appeals court in Haiti put the Manzanares trial on hold and assigned a new judge to the case. It ordered the investigation reopened to allow questioning of the ship’s captain and 12 crew members, none of whom are in Haiti. The panel also wanted a DEA agent to testify in the case, but that has yet to happen.


Of the 16 people originally arrested, including the ship’s crew, only the lone longshoreman, Georges, remains behind bars.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article215793990.html

Could it be said that present day sophisticated Black American criminal organizations make up the most elusive type of organized crime in the contemporary US ? I mean one can read a lot about the activities of LCN families , Mexican drug cartels , and so forth in the American press , yet non street gang type Black American criminal organizations are hardly if ever mentioned .


I mean I think Craig Petties was the last guy that made headlines who fit the bill and that was 10 years ago .

Well it depend on what you are searching for. For exemple, of you’re searching in news from new york, atlanta or houston, you will find black organized groups in the news.

Also, news prefer to talk about the mafia and cartels more than black gangs or natives gangs, because they are more fantasies than other groups.

there's a lot of misinformation out there. for example, the myths surrounding BMF. just take a look at their wikipedia page, it's full of lies. BMF was a record label and knot organized crime. Craig petties was real,but he had know affiliation with BMF or big meech contrary to popular belief. the BMF story is a sham. stop mentioning BMF when you mention black oarganized crime. there were plenty of real black oarganized groups,BMF is knot one of them.

They're regular indictments of Black syndicates throughout large metros , it's just doesn't capture mainstream narrative . There's no name brand collective/umbrella term for Black OC in America due to both a history of bias & small percantage of the feds having Black agents. Additionally it's quite common for Black syndicates to recruit mainly relatives, extended relatives, and friends from a familiar background.

There's a longer history of agents infiltrating those groups ( LCN, 1 % Clubs, other white mobs/syndicates) & mainstream politics/Hollywood focus on transnational drug trafficking orgs from south of the border to south america.

Canadian drug dealer of Haitian origin jailed in the United States is sent back to Canada

A Canadian drug dealer of Haitian descent who was until recently jailed in the United States was turned over to Canadian authorities earlier this month.
Laveaux François, 56, known to have trafficked cocaine between Haiti and the United States, escaped from a correctional facility in the Montreal area in 1994 on leave.
According to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he fled to Haiti. Four years before that run, in 1990, he was arrested by US authorities in Miami while attempting to unload a large quantity of cocaine from a ship.

For this crime, he was convicted and sentenced to 324 months incarceration. His sentence was then reduced to 180 months.
A few years later, in September 1994, François was transferred to Canada to finish serving his sentence. After eight months of incarceration, on leave authorized by Correctional Service Canada, the individual took the opportunity to return to his native country where he resumed his activities in the drug trafficking sector, according to US authorities .

The fugitive was arrested again in July 2007 by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), this time in Haiti, and was extradited to the United States. In December 2007, he was sentenced again to a term of imprisonment for 400 months. His sentence was later reduced to 158 months.
On October 26, when he was released from the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Pennsylvania, Laveaux François was arrested, subject to an expedited expulsion notice from the United States for non-compliance with the US immigration law. as an immigrant without a valid visa or other document necessary for his admission ".
The man was handed over "without incident" to Canadian authorities on December 4 under an arrest warrant issued by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The nature of the arrest warrant against him was not specified, but could be related to his escape from his permission in the mid-1990s.

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2...nne-aux-etats-unis-est-renvoye-au-canada

Not so much the crime that is high level, but all the stuff that followed it:

Man sentenced to life in prison for murder at 18 years old redeems himself and becomes entrepreneur http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...prison-for-murder-at-18-years-old-redeem

There's very little interesting to find on Native gangs in particular. When we compare, I have a feeling they're not nearly on the level of the African American or Caribbean groups.

The geography , size, & history of the native community makes it difficult to assess their underworld.

In Quebec, native americans organized crime groups are well documented, maybe less than the italian mob, but still.
Alot of the drugs that are send to the US, by cansdians groups, like the mafia or bikers are send with the help of natives groups.
They are heavly involved in drugs, cigarettes smuggling, weapons smuggling.

Last month, a high ranking of the Hells angels of Quebec married the daughter of the boss of a native crime group, Sharon Simon

Yeah I heard that the Mohawk territories are used extensively to cross-border smuggle the goods. They mostly just stick to smuggling though and don't really do a lot outside their territory. I don't know what's the state on them these days, but they held quite a bit of power in their own territory back in the days.

The Native street gangs on the other hand often leave a very "primitive" impression on me. Prone to violence, but the crime is rather low-level. Low-quantity drug dealing, some prostitution...definitely not as sophisticated as some of the other American gangs. They're certainly not as well-connected, definitely don't move the large amounts of dope nor are they involved in the rackets some of the Black, Hispanic or East Asian street gangs or White 1% gangs get into.

In Canada, the most well known natives street gangs are from Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I don’t know how well they are organized.

The mistress of montreal mobster Piccirilli was convicted drug queen Sharon Simon she comes from the Kanesatake Native Reserve. Her daughter had that lavish wedding with a Hells Angel few months ago.

The former director of the National Police of Haiti, Mario Andrésol, made revelations on the former President of the Republic, Michel Joseph Martelly and two senators currently in office. In a long interview with the journalist Arnaud Robert for Ayibopost, the former director of the PNH describes a police vassalized by the political power and sacked by corruption at the highest level.
The Haitian National Police was created in 1995 to replace the Haitian Armed Forces, which provided police functions. Mario Andrésol, a trained soldier, has held several positions within the institution since its creation before going into exile in 2001. He took the head of the PNH on July 22, 2005 under the transitional government of President Alexandre Boniface and the Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. The PNH has just celebrated its ten years of existence, it has the image of a highly corrupt institution, while it has just over 4000 police.
Mario Andrésol led the PNH for 7 years (from July 2005 to August 2012). With an explosive franchise, he claims that his successor, Godson Orelus, "screwed up" all his work to please former President Michel Joseph Martelly and his entourage. He delivers his most troubling memories to Ayibopost.
Death squads within the PNH.

"I arrived at the airport on a Tuesday and had to install myself as the police chief on Friday. The men who came to pick me up were actually a squadron of death. I did not know. I thought they were agents of the SWAT TEAM because they were the ones wearing the black uniform and Galil guns when I left the country. When I saw them at the airport, I thought it was a provision of the chief of police or the government.

I preferred to get in the car of a friend who had also come to get me. The well-equipped men in black had come with police vehicles and police-bullet-proof vests, they made my way into the street.

Arrived at the hotel Villa Creole, they invested and placed guards. Two days later, they were still there, and by reflex, I called one of them and asked him which promotion he belonged to. He replied that he was not promoted by the police. He told me that they were assailants who helped to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

They were old attachés, a heterogeneous group. They were not trained, but they knew how to handle weapons. When I started to question them, they told me that they were forty (40) and that they were called the "Back Up Delta". They said that where the police can not intervene, it is they who intervene. My predecessor (Editor's note, Leon Charles) knew about it. They told me, for example, at Fort National, they were the ones who intervened. They said that in those neighborhoods they did not look when they were shooting.

They wanted me to integrate them into the police. They told me that it was the director of the police who sometimes gave them some money, the director of the OAVCT (Editor's note: the Office Insurance of Vehicles against Third Parties) or the NPC (Editor's note : National Port Authority). When I was handed the list of members of the group, I saw that they were men I had already arrested when I was at the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police. Among them were former attachés and former police officers involved in drugs.

My first disposition was to hold a press conference and I stated that black uniforms no longer exist in the police force. If the public noticed men in black on the streets, they were not policemen. When these men were not black, they were kidnappers. "

Police plates to carry drugs

"I issued a statement announcing that all police vehicles would be marked. The numbers would be visible on the vehicles so that the public could identify them because previously, we could not really identify the police cars.

The license plates marked "Police" that resembled the other license plates were a frequent source of corruption. Since there were not many cars in the PNH, the plates were distributed in the police stations. Drug traffickers bribed police station officials and rented these 2000-dollar Haitian license plates per night. So when we said we saw police vehicles carrying drugs, that was true. These were license plates rented at the police stations. There was no control.

I identified the problem and nobody knew why I said: we will have new plates. We will do it by color: Port-au-Prince Green, Cap-Haitien, red; Jacmel, orange; Nippes, blue. At that time, the plates were stored at home, but not at the logistics of the PNH.

There were so many police officers involved in shady business, illegal and criminal activities. I had no statistics in mind when I said on the radio in 2005 after my arrival that 65% of the crimes that came to Haiti came from the police.

I understood that public opinion had to be with me. That's why everything I did, I communicated it on the radio and I explained why. There are so many things that were hidden. Once unveiled, the public was interested in what was happening within the police.

 "It's not better now. Godson Orelus has screwed up everything to please Martelly. "

In this position of chief of police, one must understand his role. Once you are ratified by parliament, you normally have no relationship with either the president or the prime minister. This mentality of our policies to enslave the security forces must change. I resisted Martelly, but Godson Orelus let himself go because he wants to protect his job.

Martelly asked a lot of things. He asked to reinstate individuals who had been dismissed from the police for drug trafficking. There is Féthière who is a senator now. He was dismissed from the police long before I became director, but I knew why. The president has asked for his reinstatement for his drug activities.

I was commissioner of Pétionville. Previously, he (Martelly) worked for Colombians, he carried drugs. So, he built a network of which Sonson La Familia and the others who clustered around him. There was Fourcand, who is now a senator from the south. I destroyed at least five kilometers of tracks in the area of ​​Côtes-de-Fer, the city of Martelly.

I knew he was working for Colombians and these men had a marina in Lully. Once he came to power, he invested he appropriated the marina. Because, in general, it was at the marina that they were going to hide, they used it as a transit position in front of the Côte des Arcadins. Small boats disappeared in these areas. In the same way at Losandieu at Côtes-de-Fer, in the Big Cayes.

This ex-cop pretended he was part of Haiti president’s security. He’s in DEA custody

He is one of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most wanted fugitives, accused of being a part of a four-man drug ring transporting cocaine into Miami from Port-au-Prince.

Now Jean Ednor Innocent, a former Haiti National Police officer who on Monday tried to pass himself off as a member of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s presidential security detail in the streets of Port-au-Prince, is in U.S. custody after spending 13 years as a fugitive from the law.

Innocent arrived in South Florida Wednesday after being extradited from Haiti, where he was arrested two days earlier by Haiti National Police.

“We’ve been looking for him because he has an international warrant out for his arrest,” said the new head of Haiti’s judicial police., Joany Canéus. “Every time these guys know they have one of these warrants against them, they try to find a way to ... stay out of the spotlight. But every person has their day.”

For Innocent, that day arrived Monday when cops in the president’s security detail spotted him along the motorcade route to the National Palace dressed as one of them, in camouflage fatigues and an olive-green T-shirt.

When they looked, they saw him— someone who has been fired from the police, who is no longer an officer. He was armed, wearing the same uniform as them ... along the presidential route,” Canéus said. “They arrested him, entered the palace with him, called [my office] and the government prosecutor.”

It was the second drug-trafficking-related arrest in days, and the second major arrest of someone trying to impersonate a Haiti National Police officer. Last week, Haiti Police Chief Michel-Ange Gédéon personally arrested a government employee who had been passing himself off to journalists and others in the Haitian diaspora in interviews and text messages as the chief.

On Friday, Haiti’s anti-narcotics police arrested six individuals, including two Bahamians, an American and three Haitians, in Môle-Saint-Nicolas after an airplane landed in the coastal city along Haiti’s northwest. No drugs were found aboard the airplane, said Canéus, but they had received information that the group was engaged in drug-trafficking activities in the area and individuals had been waiting for days for the plane’s arrival. The investigation is ongoing and the six remain in police custody.

All the arrests have come despite days of violent anti-government protests in major cities across Haiti. Frustrated and angry Haitians are taking to the streets to demonstrate against corruption and economic mismanagement and to demand the resignation of Moïse.

The message of the Haiti National Police today is simple and clear: It’s here to guarantee the security of everyone, their property and all public institutions. It will not fail in its mission; where disorder is, it will not ignore it even when preoccupied by other activities,” Canéus said. “It will do what it needs to oversee the protests but there are other units in the police prepared to intervene where need be.”

Known as “Flex,” or “The Comandante,” Innocent was indicted along with three others by a Miami jury in 2006. He was charged with two counts of knowingly and intentionally conspiring to import and distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine into the United States. He faces life in prison under each count.

Canéus said he cannot say with certainty if Innocent had been hiding out in Haiti all of this time. During police questioning, Innocent said he had bought the uniform, as well as others found in his car along with several National Identification cards. He said he was in the area because he was getting a cellphone fixed nearby.

“We asked him a lot of questions, but it was clear he was someone who was hiding something,” Canéus said. “How is it that you are armed and you have a bunch of police uniforms in your possession? Why is it at the very moment that the president is passing that you’re along the route?


“This is a man who is very dangerous ... a real troublemaker,” he added.

Sources familiar with Innocent’s history say he was a member of former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s presidential security detail, who has been on the DEA’s radar since 2004, the same year he was implicated in the burning of a radio station in Port-au-Prince. But just as U.S. agents failed to arrest wanted trafficker and rebel leader Guy Philippe until his 2017 arrest, they also failed in attempts to capture Innocent. Accused of aiding a former Haiti National Police officer who coordinated drug loads into the U.S., Innocent is part of the era when Haiti flourished as a “narco-state,” and Colombian cocaine smugglers would routinely hire local cops to protect their loads flown in on planes that landed at night on dirt roads illuminated with the headlights of police cruisers.

A U.S. crackdown on cocaine smuggling through Haiti has yielded the convictions of more than a dozen drug traffickers, including Haitian senior police officers and a former Haitian senator. Among them: Beaudouin “Jacques” Ketant, a Haitian narco-trafficker who accused former Aristide of turning a blind eye to the cocaine. Ketant, initially sentenced to 27 years in a U.S. prison, was deported to Haiti in 2015 when his term was cut in half after assisting the feds in their investigation.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.mia...rld/americas/haiti/article226198495.html

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — With a brisk clap of his hands, Michel Martelly summed up the first steps he would take if he ever left the music business and became the president of Haiti.

“First thing, after I establish my power, which would be very strong and necessary, I would close that congress thing,” Mr. Martelly was quoted as saying in 1997, when he was still a hugely popular singer. “Out of my way.”

His words have proved prophetic. A political crisis almost four years into Mr. Martelly’s presidency gave life to the fantasy he once described: He is now running the country without the checks and balances of a parliament.

After Mr. Martelly and his opponents in Parliament could not agree on elections, most legislative terms expired, and the seats remain empty. Only 11 elected officials remain in the entire country, and the president is one of them.

For two months, Mr. Martelly has governed Haiti by executive order, concentrating power in the hands of a man who, his critics say, is a prisoner of his past, surrounded by a network of friends and aides who have been arrested on charges including rape, murder, drug trafficking and kidnapping.

As Mr. Martelly strengthens his hold on power, scandals involving those close to him have continued to mount, raising questions about the president’s ability to lead.

One of Mr. Martelly’s senior advisers was jailed for six months during the president’s tenure after being accused of killing a man in a gunfight at the Dominican border. Another friend of the president vanished last year, shortly after being released from jail in a marijuana trafficking case.

The prosecutor in that case fled the country fearing retaliation.

Yet another of the president’s associates is in jail, accused of running a kidnapping ring. The authorities are trying to determine whether the man, Woodley Ethéart, who said he worked at the Ministry of Interior, laundered ransom money through a lucrative catering contract at the presidential palace, an investigator familiar with the case said.

One longtime law enforcement official said he stopped going to events at the palace because he kept running into people who had been arrested on charges as serious as murder but were now working at the presidential offices as security guards.

“There they were, in the palace, carrying automatic weapons,” the official said under the condition that his name not be published out of safety concerns.

The Martelly administration’s influence has been criticized most for its effect on the judiciary, where the criminal cases of some people close to the president have stalled or disappeared.

Prosecutors who objected to the administration’s interference were fired or fled, and one judge who complained that the president had meddled in a civil corruption case against Sophia Martelly, the first lady, died two days later.

I would be very concerned of this interconnected web of nefarious characters,” said Robert Maguire, a Haiti scholar at George Washington University. “Martelly has empowered them to do what they do. He has established an environment of corruption, abuse of power and impunity.”

The president’s office did not respond to several requests for an interview since January. The presidential spokesman, Lucien Jura, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Mr. Martelly’s allies defended him, saying that the president could not be blamed for the actions of his friends. Several said that he is loyal to a fault, and that he will stand beside old friends no matter what trouble they find themselves in. The president, aides said, wants the best for Haiti but is easily influenced by relatives known for ties to drug trafficking and friends who abuse their proximity to power.

One of those relatives, the president’s brother-in-law Charles Saint-Rémy, said the president and his family had been victims of a politically motivated campaign to discredit them.

We have had stability for four years,” said Daniel Edwin Zenny, a senator allied with the president. “We used to have 10,000 to 20,000 people protesting on the streets every day. Now we have 1,500 to 4,000, and while they are protesting, the country is moving forward. This is not a big situation yet.”

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nyt...andal-engulfs-circle-of-friends.amp.html

Ruthless Long Island Bloods gang leader off to prison for 20 years for drug operation and multiple shootings http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...ds-gang-leader-off-to-prison-for-20-year

Baltimore gangster arrested by FBI in Dominican Republic after spending two years on the lam http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...ed-by-fbi-in-dominican-republic-after-sp

United Blood Nation gangsters plead guilty to RICO conspiracy involving multiple murders http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...ters-plead-guilty-to-rico-conspiracy-inv

Three Gangster Disciples bosses guilty of racketeering, triple murder in nightclub, murder of witness, and shooting http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...bosses-guilty-of-racketeering-triple-mur

Music label or violent gang? Original Block Hustlaz provided soundtrack while it flooded Philadelphia with drugs http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...ng-original-block-hustlaz-provided-sound

From the Caribbean to Dubai and Europe: Profile of international drug boss Shurendy “Tyson” Quant http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profil...ai-and-europe-profile-of-international-d

Middletown drug boss with ties to Sinaloa Cartel sentenced to 25 years in prison https://gangstersinc.org/blog/middletown-drug-boss-with-ties-to-sinaloa-cartel-sentenced-to-25

Robert Lee Ward, the Florida drug boss who ordered FBI informant in his organization killed and continued biz https://gangstersinc.org/blog/robert-lee-ward-the-florida-drug-boss-who-ordered-fbi-informant-i

28 November 2023 12:18 PM by Keely Goodall

Ralph Stanfield, South Africa's most powerful alleged underworld figure, is currently fighting several cases behind bars.
Lester Kiewit speaks to Aron Hyman, investigative journalist.

(Listen to the interview in the audio below)

https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles...alleged-crime-boss-in-sa-ralph-stanfield

Interesting , so the South African gangsters are member of a gang and the numbers. It make sense, just like many gangsters in California.

Africa has many countries with strong organized crime groups, Nigeria, Morocco and South Africa.

We know that the Moccro Mafia and the Nigerian Mafia are actives in many continents.
But what about the South African organized crime ?

moccro mafia is the name that media gave to criminal groups in Belgium and Netherlands, but they are not formed by moroccans only but several etnich groups, Nigerian cults are by far more organized

Ohhh okay I get it now. I really thought that the Moccro Mafia was a name for the Moroccan.
So its some ethnics groups from Belgium or the Netherland.
Thanks for the info brother

Two cousins of alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield were shot dead recently. Stanfield, who, together with his wife Nicole Johnson, has been in state custody since their arrest at their home in the upmarket suburb of Constantia at the end of September. Stanfield was the leader of The Firm, a gang conglomerate with a heavy 28s membership. Stanfield’s uncle Colin Stanfield was believed to have been the leader of The Firm before his death in 2004.

Nicole Johnson and husband Ralph Stanfield.