An array of identities about the apparent kingpin of the Haiti President assassination has befuddled investigators. He was a physician, a church pastor, a failed Florida businessman who filed for bankruptcy and underneath the veneer lies the key to the abominable episode.
Local authorities identified the suspect as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 62, unknown in Haitian political circles, and associates suggested he was duped by those really behind the slaying of President Jovenel Moïse.
A Florida friend of Sanon claimed he was an evangelical Christian pastor and also is a licensed physician in Haiti, but not in the US. Sanon told him he was approached by people claiming to represent the US State and Justice departments who wanted to install him as president.
He said the plan was only for Moïse to be arrested, and Sanon would not have participated if he knew Moïse would be killed.
Echoing those sentiments was the Rev. Larry Caldwell, a Florida pastor, who said he worked with Sanon setting up churches and medical clinics in Haiti in 2000-2010. He doesn’t believe Sanon would have been involved in violence.
Haiti’s National Police chief, Léon Charles, said Moïse’s killers were protecting Sanon, whom he accused of working with those who plotted the assassination.
A US DEA official said that one of the suspects in Moïse’s assassination was at times a confidential source to the agency, and that the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA after the killing and was urged to surrender.
The official said the DEA and a US State Department official provided information to Haiti’s government that led to the surrender and arrest of one suspect and one other individual, whom it didn’t identify.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said that a Florida-based enterprise, CTU Security, used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for Colombian suspects.
He said Dimitri Hérard, head of general security at Haiti’s National Palace, flew to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama in the months before the assassination, and Colombian police are investigating whether he had any role in recruiting the mercenaries.
In Haiti, prosecutors are seeking to interrogate Hérard as part of the assassination investigation.
Charles said Sanon flew into Haiti in June on a private jet accompanied by several of the alleged gunmen.
The suspects were told their job was to protect Sanon, but they were later ordered to arrest the president, Charles said.
Sanon’s associate said he attended a recent meeting in Florida with Sanon and about a dozen other people, including Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera, a Venezuelan émigré to Miami who runs CTU Security.
He said a presentation was made for rebuilding Haiti, including its water system, converting trash into energy and fixing roads.
He said Sanon asked why the security team accompanying him to Haiti were all Colombians.
Sanon was told that Haitians couldn’t be trusted and that the system is corrupt, the associate said.
Sanon “is completely gullible,” the associate added. “He thinks God is going to save everything.”
Records show Sanon has never been licensed to practice medicine or any other occupation covered by Florida’s Department of Health.
Sanon said in court papers filed in his 2013 bankruptcy case that he was a physician and a pastor at the Tabarre Evangelical Tabernacle in Haiti.
He said he had stakes in enterprises including the Organization of Rome Haiti, which he identified as a non-governmental group, a radio station in Haiti and medical facilities in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
At the time of his bankruptcy, he and his wife reported income of $5,000 per month, and a home in Brandon, Florida, valued at about $143,000, with a mortgage of more than $367,000.
A federal bankruptcy trustee later determined they hid ownership of about 35 acres in Haiti from creditors.
Florida records show Sanon started about a dozen businesses over the last 20 years, all of which failed, including ones that appeared related to medical imaging, physical therapy, fossil fuel trading, real estate and veganism.
Meanwhile, UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Haiti’s request for security assistance is being examined. The United Nations has been involved in Haiti on and off since 1990, but the last UN military peacekeepers left the country in 2017.