HAITIAN CARGO PUTS S. FLORIDA BACK IN CENTER OF DRUG
TRADE

A handful of wealthy and well-connected drug traffickers from Haiti
are putting South Florida back in the forefront of the U.S. drug trade
- -- spurring a spate of violence and drug seizures that federal
authorities say harken to Miami's Wild West days of the 1980s.

``They are wealthy. They are powerful and they are politically
connected in a country that is struggling with being one of the most
poverty-stricken in the world,'' said Hardrick Crawford, chief of the
narcotics and organized crime division at the FBI in Miami.

``In just a few years, they have gone from being dormant, small-time
players to very serious players.''

In the past two weeks, federal authorities have learned just how
serious and sophisticated they are.

A stash of nearly 3,000 pounds of cocaine on board four freighters
coming from Haiti was so well-hidden behind the welded steel of the
most remote section of the keel that Customs agents had to haul the
massive ships from the water and cut through the hull from the outside
to retrieve it.

Without FBI informants telling them exactly where the cocaine was
hidden, it never would have been detected.

Federal authorities have long suspected that political turmoil and
economic instability has made Haiti a bull's-eye for Colombian
traffickers looking for the easiest path to the U.S. The focus of the
drug trade -- for years hovering over the southwest border -- is once
again swinging South Florida's way, federal authorities say.

For three years, a federal task force has gathered information on some
13,000 pounds of seized cocaine from Haiti, 30 home invasion robberies
and more than 15 unsolved murders in Miami-Dade -- fallout from what
federal authorities say is a large drug organization based in Haiti.

Still, federal agents have been largely unsuccessful in penetrating
the Haitian border to gather information and investigate a group of
Haitians they say parlayed the money from small-time drug deals in the
early 1990s into a consortium that controls almost all the drugs
leaving Haiti secreted on ships.

Customs Special Agent in Charge Frank Figueroa cringes at the thought
of how many tons of cocaine may have slipped through already. He has
ordered his agents to conduct a ``cost-benefit'' analysis of the three
to five Haitian freighters arriving each week to pick up shipments of
such items as bicycles, beans, rice, and cooking oil.

In many cases, the freighters arrive empty and wait weeks to be
loaded.

``I'm willing to bet they can't be making a living doing just that,''
Figueroa said. ``I don't think the numbers will work out. It's
frightening. This is a smuggling scheme that perhaps has gone on for a
long time.''

Officials Frustrated

The FBI has been frustrated for years over the lack of drug
intelligence coming from Haiti. Officials point to a Haitian drug
smuggler on their most wanted list since Oct. 5, 1995: Lorquet St.
Hilaire took a shot at an FBI agent in a parking lot in North Miami,
then slipped out of the country to Haiti.

``We know where he is. We know where he lives,'' said one federal
agent close to the case. ``We can't touch him. That ought to tell you
how connected these people are over there. If we could just retrieve
our fugitives, we could put a real dent in this organization.''

So far, federal agents have been able to charge only one identified
leader of the consortium, Founa Jean Luis, who was named in a December
indictment. That indictment was unsealed Jan. 28 when her two alleged
Miami accomplices -- businesswoman Clarice Jean-Michel and Haitian
boat owner Emmanuel Thibaud -- were arrested on drug smuggling
conspiracy charges.

In a sealed affidavit filed in August, FBI agent Charles Daly
described in detail how Luis was caught in recorded telephone
conversation with her alleged co-conspirators organizing a shipment
and its distribution. The recordings came with the help of two Haitian
drug dealers looking to buy time off their own sentences in Orlando.

``Jean-Michel stated that [Luis], a Haitian-based drug supplier, had
sent a multi-hundred-kilogram load of cocaine from Haiti to Miami on a
motor vessel owned by Emmanuel Thibaud,'' Daly wrote.

Federal authorities say they know little more about Luis, whom they
believe is in her mid-40s. She remains a fugitive.

Drug Front

Jean-Michel, 46, of 8634 Sheraton Dr., Miramar, listed herself as an
``entrepreneur'' when she made a $500 political contribution in 1997.
She was the president and director of the now-dissolved corporation
High Level Multi-Services Inc., which federal investigators now say
was likely a front for a drug trafficking enterprise.

In 1997, Opa-locka police charged her with leaving the scene of a
personal injury accident and careless driving after she hit a school
crossing guard and kept driving. She later said she didn't see the
guard.

Thibaud, 35, of 2781 NW 108th Ave., Miami, allegedly owned one of the
boats Luis used to ship the cocaine to the U.S.

Both Jean-Michel and Thibaud have been in federal custody awaiting
trial since their January arrest. On Jan. 29, federal agents began
searching the Haitian freighters on the Miami River.