![\"Officials](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1234077952.jpg\" "\\"Officials")
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Officials attend a ceremony in honor of late Haitian President Jovenel Moise at the National Pantheon Museum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on July 20, 2021. <\/p>\n
VALERIE BAERISWYL<\/p>\n
AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The high-stakes plot to remove Haiti President Jovenel Mo\u00efse<\/a> that culminated in his July 7, 2021, assassination was carried out for roughly $343,000, and financed through a patchwork of loans, credit cards, wire transfers and pandemic relief funds, an FBI forensics accountant told a Miami federal jury.<\/p>\n Nestor Mascarell, a certified public accountant and 20-year veteran of the agency, said he tracked the financing through hundreds of accounts and transactions associated with four defendants on trial in South Florida for conspiring to kidnap or kil Mo\u00efse nearly five years ago. Among them were records from 28 bank accounts associated with the defendants and their companies, including Worldwide Capital Lending and Counter Terrorist Security Unit and its affiliate, Counter Terrorist Federal Academy, known as CTU, whose Miami-area partners are charged with hiring a group of former Colombian soldiers to carry out the deadly assault.<\/p>\n Mascarell broke down his analysis into four main funding sources: $22,850.60 from Frederick Bergmann, who in 2024 was sentenced to nine years in prison for sending ballistic vests to Haiti for 20 Colombians; $11,094.20 from CTU and $160,182.20 from Worldwide Capital Lending Group.<\/p>\n He also included in his total an estimated $150,000 that a Haitian businessman said he poured into the scheme. Rodolphe \u201cDodof\u201d Jaar,<\/a> a convicted cocaine trafficker who has pleaded guilty to the main conspiracy charge and testified on behalf of the government in hopes of reducing his life sentence, testified earlier this month<\/a> that he funneled money to a fired Haitian government official<\/a> to bribe members of the president\u2019s security detail to stand down during the attack on Mo\u00efse\u2019s home outside Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\n Mascarell was the government\u2019s 44th and final witness as prosecutors rested their case on Monday after seven weeks of trial.<\/p>\n Eleven people were charged by federal prosecutors In South Florida in connection with the murder. Two others also were charged in connection with the conspiracy and have pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges. They are among eight people who have taken plea deals in connection to the case.<\/p>\n Three of the defendants on trial \u2014 Antonio \u201cTony\u201d Intriago, Arc\u00e1ngel Pretel Ortiz and James Solages \u2014 worked for CTU. A fourth defendant, Walter Veintemilla, a Broward County mortgage broker, is accused of financing the plot through Worldwide Capital.<\/p>\n Until Mascarell\u2019s testimony, much of the government\u2019s evidence depicted a group struggling to acquire weapons, ammunition and cash in their various false starts to overthrow Mo\u00efse. But through the forensics accountant\u2019s testimony, prosecutors sought to show how the defendants aimed to enrich themselves with lucrative security contracts in Haiti under a new president.<\/p>\n Mascarell testified that money was wired from bank accounts in South Florida to Haiti, and funds were raised through a variety of sources, including federal pandemic relief loans. He said about $30,000 in pandemic benefits, guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, were used to fund some of the plot.<\/p>\n At the center of his analysis was a loan agreement that had 21 draw requests, part of a $175,000 loan from Veintemilla\u2019s Worldwide Capital Lending Group to Intriago and Pretel. The loan was made on behalf of Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haiti-born doctor and pastor whom the group was backing to replace Mo\u00efse, until the scheme changed to instead support a Haiti Superior Court justice, Windelle Coq Th\u00e9lot<\/a>. Sanon, who is ill, will be tried at a later date on the conspiracy charge.<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Veintemilla was the bank for these defendants to kill or kidnap Mo\u00efse,\u201d prosecutor Jason Wu said Tuesday.<\/p>\n Transactions cited during Mascarell\u2019s testimony included a $26,484 payment to fly in the 20 Colombians to Port-au-Prnce via the neighboring Dominican Republic; $20,000 to the owner of the hotel where the Colombians stayed in Port-au-Prince; $15,477.27 for a chartered plane that flew Sanon and others to Haiti from Fort Lauderdale, and a $15,000 bank transfer on June 3, 2021 to Phenel Gordon D\u00e9sir, an associate of Sanon who served as executive secretary of the Ayiti2054 political party.<\/p>\n The money, according to text messages between Veintemilla and Sanon, was for Solages \u201cto buy screws,\u201d Mascarell testified. He said in total the defendants spent $21,234.26 for tactical gear and vests.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Screws\u2019 is a reference to ammunition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Eight weeks and jury instructions<\/p>\n The case has now entered its eighth week, and closing arguments could start as early as next week.<\/p>\n On Monday, after the government rested, defense lawyers began presenting their witnesses, the first of whom was Nicole Phillips. A legal adviser on human rights in Haiti, Philips testified about the role of gangs in political life in Haiti as well as the government structure. She also testified about the wave of opposition to Mo\u00efse in the months before his killing, including the view that he had exceeded his term in office \u2014 an issue raised by at least one of the government\u2019s cooperating witnesses, former Sen. Joseph Joel John.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, defense attorneys negotiated jury instructions, tried to get charges dismissed against some of their clients and attempted to get additional witness testimony in, such as a pathologist to advance their argument that a bullet taken from the president\u2019s forearm had been planted.<\/p>\n \u201cWe walked into a fairly impossible situation,\u201d Orlando do Campo, a defense lawyer for Pretel, said as prosecutors challenged a last-minute request for expert testimony as the jury remained home on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The defense has faced some limitations. They\u2019ve been unable to travel to Haiti, where some of the suspects in the assassination broke out of prison in February 2025, and U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra has imposed limits on evidence from a parallel investigation there. Also, because the case centers on an alleged violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act and one of the defendants, Pretel, served as an FBI informant, some of the evidence has remained confidential.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of witnesses that were outside of our control and not present, but within the government\u2019s control, specifically the Haitian national police officers,\u201d one of the lawyers representing Veintemilla told the court on Tuesday during a discussion about jury instructions.<\/p>\n She also noted that the defense wanted to call former Haiti National Police Director Leon Charles and a jailed former government official, Joseph Felix Badio, as witnesses. Badio, whose participation in the plot elevated it from a kidnapping to an assassination, has figured prominently in both the government and defense arguments.<\/p>\n “The Haitian government has been requesting that the U.S. take Badio for months, if not years, and the U.S. has refused to bring him over here… and Badio is material to our defense, and he was not accessible to us,\u201d the defense attorney said.<\/p>\n Prosecutor Wu did not address the specific witnesses but did note that it wasn\u2019t easy getting their one Haitian government witness, the country\u2019s pathologist, out of Haiti to testify. They made inquiries, he said, \u201cabout whether certain Haitian law enforcement would be willing or able to travel, but we did not receive a positive response.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the latest in a series of rulings against the defense over two days by Becerra, who on Tuesday reiterated her opposition to letting the defense suggest to the jury that the defendants were executing a valid arrest warrant signed by a Haitian judge. That judge testified that he had no authority to sign the arrest warrant and that it had been signed under duress.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no evidence,\u201d Becerra said, rejecting arguments that officials of the U.S. government or the Haitian government had authorized the defendants\u2019 actions. \u201cTo suggest this was a valid warrant, to say the least, it is a stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, lawyers for the defendants moved for an acquittal on behalf of their clients, arguing that the government had failed to prove a conspiracy.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s insufficient evidence that\u2019s been presented,\u201d defense attorney Marissel Descalzo said. She said only four cooperating witnesses mentioned her client, including one who recounted what she characterized as a joke \u2014 that there would be a protest and Mo\u00efse would \u201cfall into the crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no evidence that Mr. Veintemilla heard that statement, or even interacted with the statement, or understood the statement to mean anything other than a joke,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The defense has argued that the plot to arrest Mo\u00efse was ultimately hijacked and he was killed by his own security forces, not the Colombian commandos hired by CTU\u2019s partners.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever ultimately assassinated the president was not part of the conspiracy that the government alleges commenced in the jurisdiction of the United States, because all of this actually materialized very early on the first week of July,\u201d Emmanuel Perez, a lawyer for Intriago, said.<\/p>\n Simon Patrick Dray, one of Solages\u2019 defense lawyers, noted that the 12-member jury \u201chas heard multiple conspiracies and different plans\u201d that shifted over time. He argued that if one were to believe the government\u2019s case, the plan to kill the president occurred on July 6 when the men gathered at Jaar\u2019s mountaintop house.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was in Haiti, not the United States,\u201d Dray said. \u201cThere was no jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Wu argued on each of the points, saying the government, through evidence that included a 900-page summary of text messages, has proven its case. Not only is the argument of multiple conspiracies \u201ca very weak theory,\u201d Wu said, but there is no alternate perpetrator in the form of Badio.<\/p>\n Becerra sided with the government, noting that the government\u2019s cooperating witnessses \u201cclearly set out that each and every one of these defendants was involved in a conspiracy to kidnap President Mo\u00efse and at some point, the conspiracy became a conspiracy to assassinate.\u201d<\/p>\n Vodou expert<\/p>\n The day before she blocked an effort by the defense to bring in a Vodou expert.<\/p>\n The defense wanted to call a practicing Vodou<\/a> priest as an expert about certain aspects of the religion. The priest was going to testify about a link between the religion and the mutilation of the president after he was dead.<\/p>\n The way in which Mo\u00efse\u2019s blood-soaked body was mutilated has raised questions about whether the religion and cultural belief played a role. He wasn\u2019t just shot a dozen times \u2014 both his arms and legs were broken, his face was destroyed, and he was shot through the wrist of his left hand.<\/p>\n This \u201cis not the result of random gunfire. This was deliberate,\u201d attorney David Howard, representing Pretel, said in support of calling the defense\u2019s expert.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it curious that a Vodou priest would be able to take the stand and say that he is well-versed in Vodou assassinations, which appears to me to be something, on its face, impossible because it\u2019s not something that that religion condones,\u201d Becerra said on Friday when the issue was first raised by defense lawyers.<\/p>\n Defense lawyers say they expect to rest their case on Friday. None of the four defendants are expected to take the stand.<\/p>\n Jonathan Friedman, a lawyer for Solages, has accused prosecutors of trying to block the testimony of at least one of the individuals he would like to call. He accused prosecutors of using intimidation tactics to pressure a potential witness not to take the stand on behalf of Solages, a Haitian-American handyman who was CTU\u2019s representative in Haiti.<\/p>\n The witness, Jimmy Thompson, interacted with Solages in the days before the July 7 assassination and on the day of the attack. Earlier, prosecutors presented evidence showing that Solages flew to Texas to meet with Thompson and later told him on July 7 that \u201cthe contractors did it.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite that evidence, Friedman said, Thompson could provide exculpatory testimony.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a critical witness to our case,\u201d he said, adding that the information they want to elicit from Thompson \u201cis unavailable from any other source.\u201d<\/p>\n He told Becerra that after alerting prosecutors of plans to call Thompson, he was informed that the witness might be treated as a co-conspirator after \u201cthe government represented that Mr. Thompson was not a co-conspirator in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a memo suggesting that he was not going to be charged with any crime. So there\u2019s sort of overtures of government intimidation and overreach,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n He asked Becerra to grant Thompson immunity or compel the government to do so.<\/p>\n Prosecutor Sean McLaughlin rejected the accusation of witness intimidation, telling the judge that he had \u201cno idea\u201d what Friedman is \u201ctalking about in terms of witness tampering or what the overtures are.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Thompson is the individual that Mr. Solages flies out to see in late June. He reports back \u2026 that he had this wonderful meeting, and God is guiding us. And then, of course, he comes back to Haiti, and they do the assassination,\u201d McLaughlin said.<\/p>\n The fact that Thompson checked in with Solages while he was in Haiti, McLaughlin said, shows that \u201cit\u2019s clear\u201d he was briefed on what they were going to do.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the same person that Mr. Solages reaches out to once the gig is up, basically, and they\u2019ve been cornered. And then Mr. Solages tells him, point-blank, that the contractors did it,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cSo from the government\u2019s point of view \u2026 he is a co conspirator.\u201d<\/p>\n