Disaster capitalists
were flocking to Haiti in a “gold rush” for contracts to
rebuild the country after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, wrote
the current U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten in a secret Feb. 1,
2010 cable obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Haïti
Liberté.
“THE
GOLD RUSH IS ON!” Merten headlined a section of his 6 p.m.
situation report – or Sitrep – back to Washington. “As
Haiti digs out from the
earthquake, different [U.S.] companies are moving in to sell
their concepts, products and services,”
he wrote. “President Préval met with Gen Wesley Clark
Saturday [Jan. 30] and received a sales presentation on a
hurricane/earthquake resistant foam core house designed for low
income residents.”
Former U.S. Presidential candidate and retired General Wesley
Clark was promoting – along with professional basketball star
Alonzo Mourning – InnoVida Holdings, LLC, a Miami-based company,
which had pledged to donate 1,000 foam-core panel built house
for Haiti’s homeless.
The Pompano Beach,
Florida-based disaster recovery company “AshBritt has been
talking to various institutions about a national plan for
rebuilding all government buildings,” Merten continued in
his dispatch. “Other companies are proposing their housing
solutions or their land use planning ideas, or other
construction concepts. Each is vying for the ear of President in
a veritable free-for-all.”
One
man who had the ear of President Préval, perhaps more than
anyone else, was Lewis Lucke, Washington’s “Unified Relief and
Response Coordinator,” heading up the entire U.S. earthquake
relief effort in Haiti. He met with Préval and Prime Minister
Jean-Max Bellerive two weeks after the quake, and at least one
more time after that, according to the cables. Lucke, a 27-year
veteran of the U.S. Agency for International Development, had
overseen multi-billion contracts for Bechtel and other companies
as USAID Mission Director in post-invasion Iraq.
Lucke stepped down as Haiti relief coordinator in April 2010,
after only three months, telling his hometown newspaper, The
Austin-American Statesman, in an interview: “It became
clear to us that if it was handled correctly, the earthquake
represented as much an opportunity as it did a calamity... So
much of the china was broken that it gives the chance to put it
together hopefully in a better and different way.”
But
in December 2010, Lucke sued AshBritt and its Haitian partner,
GB Group (belonging to Haiti’s richest man, Gilbert Bigio) for
almost $500,000. He claimed the companies “did not pay him
enough for consulting services that included hooking the
contractor up with powerful people and helping to navigate
government bureaucracy,” according to the Associated Press.
Lucke had signed a lucrative $30,000 per month agreement with
AshBritt and GB Group within eight weeks of stepping down,
helping them secure $20 million in construction contracts.
Before the lawsuit was settled, Lucke had already joined masonry
product supplier MC Endeavors. The firm sent out another of many
press releases last month advertising its ability to build homes
and applauding Haiti’s newly-inaugurated President Michel
Martelly’s declaration: “This is a new
Haiti that is open for business now.”
AshBritt and Lucke weren’t the only gold-seekers to end up in
lawsuits. Just over a year after his benevolent gesture,
Innovida’s CEO Claudio Osorio was in court being sued by another
NBA star, Carlos Boozer, for having “intentionally,
maliciously, fraudulently” squandered a $1 million
investment by the basketball player in InnoVida Holdings,
reported the Chicago Sun-Times of Apr. 24, 2011. The article
quotes Boozer’s attorney as saying that Osorio misrepresented
his business record, lied, and “promised 1,000 percent
returns from projects that benefitted disaster-stricken areas”
like Haiti. “InnoVida is a defendant to at least 14 known
lawsuits, including a blanket lien on the operating factory’s
assets,” the suit states. InnoVida was taken over by a
court-ordered receiver Mar. 3.
Ambassador Merten’s announced “gold rush” began as
Haitians were still being pulled from the rubble. Since then,
USAID has doled out nearly $200 million in relief and
reconstruction contracts. By this April, just 2.5% of the money
had gone to Haitian firms, according to the Center for Economic
and Policy Research.
Lucke, for one, justifies making money off of
disasters. “It’s kind of the American way,” he told
Haïti Liberté. “Just because you’re trying to do business
doesn’t mean you’re trying to be rapacious. There’s nothing
insidious about that... It wasn’t worse than
Iraq.” |
