In the days after Haiti President Jovenel Moïse was brazenly shot to death in his hillside home above Port-au-Prince more than four years ago, federal agents fanned out across South Florida in search of a connection.
They served search warrants at the homes and businesses of four individuals: two operators of a Miami-Dade security firm that hired the former Colombian soldiers accused of the killing, a Broward businessman who had allegedly financed their airline tickets, and a Tampa man who shipped ballistic vests to Haiti.
They also found at the home of one of the defendants — a former FBI informant — sketches and handwritten notes. One note refererred to Moïse and gang warlord “Jimmy Cherisier.” It also referred to a Haitian politician known as “JJJ,” the former senator John Joel Joseph, who has pleaded guilty in the conspiracy case, as well as to “Aristide,” former president Jean Bertrand Aristide and head of the party Joseph once represented in the Haitian parliament. A diagram with these names included dollar signs and the phrases “super money laundry” and “9 criminal groups.”
“We seized contracts, communications, digital services and miscellaneous documents,” FBI special agent Ty Morrison, who searched the Miramar offices of Walter Veintemilla on July 27, 2021, testified before being asked about another defendant in the case: a Haitian doctor seeking to replace the deceased head of state.
“Did you seize any contracts involving Christian Sanon?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Altanese Phenelus asked. Morrison replied yes.
READ MORE: Who was involved in killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moise?
Though Sanon is to be tried separately because of health issues, his name figured prominently during the trial on Friday as prosecutors sought to map out the path to the president’s killing on July 7, 2021, and their case against the four men now on trial: Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, 53, a former FBI informant, Colombian national and U.S. permanent resident; Antonio Intriago, 62, the Venezuelan-American owner of a Doral security company that hired Pretel; James Solages, 40, a Haitian-American handyman who also worked for Intriago, and Veintemilla, 57, an Ecuadorian American that prosecutors say helped finance the plan targeting Moïse.
A $175,000 loan agreement given by Veintemilla’s Worldwide firm to CTU on behalf of Sanon was among the documents seized, along with correspondence showing requests for thousands of dollars in May 2021 to pay for lodging and transportation costs in Haiti for 20 former Colombian soldiers who flew from Bogotá on June 4, 2021, with return flights four days before the president was killed on July 7. The cost of their airlines tickets: $200,000, according to the evidence the government submitted along with seized copies of some of the Colombians’ passport, other communications and photographs showing meetings at a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale ahead of the slaying, and a visit to Haiti by Intriago, one of the managers of CTU.
Prosecutors in the Miami federal case have accused the five South Florida men of conspiring to kill the president by hiring the team of ex-Colombian soldiers to carry out the deadly hit in his bedroom in the middle of the night. Defense lawyers argue that Moïse was killed by members of his own presidential security detail and national police officers before the Colombian team — hired by Intriago and his partner, Pretel, a former FBI informant and Colombian national with U.S. residency — arrived at his home.
On Friday, as the trial wrapped up its second week, federal prosecutors continued calling agents from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations to discuss the evidence they had amassed.
Case draws scrutiny
The investigation has drawn scrutiny, both for how Haitian authorities handled evidence — including sealing bullets recovered from Moïse’s body that were stored in plastic ziplock bags and storing machetes and a pry bar in a plastic red and yellow rice bag — and for how American investigators proceeded.
Asked about dusting for fingerprints and DNA on several weapons he had retrieved from Haiti, FBI special agent Nicholas Rahmer on Friday explained he did not conduct those forensics due to the probability of cross-contamination by the time he arrived in Haiti.
“If the weapons had been handled by one person and not by any additional persons, or believed to be not handled by any other persons, we would have ordered for DNA or fingerprint testing,” he testified. “But due to the weapons exchanging hands multiple times by people that were not wearing gloves or appropriate personal protective equipment, we did not request additional testing.”
Rahmer testified that made several visits to Haiti in relation to the case including in September 2022, and again in April 2023, in both instances to review evidence gathered by Haitian authorities. The visits were follow-ups to that of an initial FBI team that traveled to Port-au-Prince six days after the killing but only spent six hours at the crime scene during their two weeks in the country, according to the testimony of other agents.
“We were looking for items that we believed to be in Haiti, or items that belonged to the defendants in the case, or persons involved,” Rahmer said.
Rahmer added his September visit offered limited access to the evidence because of restrictions under Haitian law. When he returned in April, he was granted “wider access” by the police and investigating judge in the case, Walther Wesser Voltaire. The agent was given access to several rifles seized by Haitian police that his team was permitted to temporarily transfer to the U.S. for ballistics testing.
He also flew back with the two bullets and bullet fragments removed from the president’s body, as well as the cell phones of some of the suspects, he said.
Rahmer said he did not feel “the need to bring back everything” due to the parallel investigation in Haiti. “We wanted to respect the sensitivities, and for our investigation, it wasn’t necessary,” he said.
He was also given access to the Haiti National Police’s images of the crime scene taken at 12:08 p.m. on July 7, 2021, hours after the killing. The photographs, shown publicly for the first time, showed Moïse’s two-storied residence riddled with bullet casings across the yard, and the impacts inside the house, windows and furniture.
“The ammunition was either relatively oxidized or old,” Rahmer testified as a prosecutor flipped through the photographs with yellow forensic markers showing the bullet casings. “It wasn’t very good ammunition.”
The day before, during cross-examination of another government witness by the defense, it was revealed that a box of ammunition the FBI found in Moïse’s bedroom came from the same lot as a larger cache seized at the home of Reynaldo Corvington — a Haitian businessman who was released from Haiti’s National Penitentiary more than two years ago due to “insufficient evidence.” Rahmer wasn’t asked about the origin of the ammunition, but as he testified about the spraying of bullets, which lodged in a television in a first-floor conference room and left impacts on the yellow interior walls, he was asked what it indicated. He said that “there was shooting happening inside the house as well.”
Haiti evidence
Defense attorneys have questioned the chain of custody over the evidence. During cross-examination, the attorneys challenged federal agents on the documents they found, and whether anything said to kill or kidnap Moïse.
The defense has also questioned why some evidence is being allowed in the case and other evidence excluded. For instance, the Haitian investigation by Voltaire has focused on the president’s inner circle and includes testimony from some key figures who have figured prominently in both the Haiti probe and in the Miami trial. But they have not been deposed or called as witnesses here.
Among them is Joseph Félix Badio, a former Haitian government official who is charged in the Haiti case but not in the Miami one. The defense claims Badio paid off a house in New York after the Haitian president’s slaying.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra has limited references to the Haitian investigation in the Miami trial, including the inquiry led by Voltaire, who allowed U.S. authorities to access his evidence “on loan.” Voltaire had also reluctantly allowed the United States to transfer Sanon, Solages and two others who have since pleaded guilty — Joseph Vincent, a Haitian American and one time confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and retired Colombian army colonel German Rivera —from Haiti’s national penitentiary to Miami to face federal conspiracy charges in connection with the assassination.
Though Voltaire did so hoping he would also have access to the defendants or any new ones to help him in his ongoing investigation, that did not take place. His case in Haiti, which charged more than 50 people, including former first lady Martine Moïse., has since been set aside after a Haitian appeals court ruled the inquiry was incomplete and the case needed further work, including determining who ultimately was responsible for the killing.
