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A South Florida businessman accused of funding the plot to assassinate former Haitian President Jovenel Moise received legal advice endorsing a mission to capture the head of state from a confidential informant of a US intelligence agency, court documents unveiled in July 2024 allege. According to the accused’s legal team, “the discovery received from The Government redacts the U.S. intelligence agency with which [the informant] is affiliated,” but “it is clear that he is a [confidential informant] for a U.S. Intelligence Agency.”

The businessman, Walter Veintemilla, and his company, Worldwide Capital Lending Group, stand accused of providing a $175,000 line of credit to Florida defense contractor CTU Security LLC, which reportedly carried out the assassination.

On July 1, Veintemilla’s attorneys filed a pretrial motion to depose the alleged intelligence informant, “J.C.,” who is described as an Ecuadorian lawyer living in Bolivia. Veintemilla’s defense argues that testimony from “J.C.” would support their contention “that several investigative and administrative agencies of the United States Government were aware of the actions and intentions of his alleged co-conspirators in Haiti and supported those actions.”

Veintemilla’s co-defendants also joined in that motion to depose J.C. in Bolivia. Several of them, including Arcangel Pretel Ortiz and Antonio Intriago, were accused by the Bolivian government of plotting an aborted coup attempt in October 2020 against President Luis Arce. German Alejandro Rivera Garcia, a retired Colombian Army officer who helped lead the kill team in Haiti, was also present in Bolivia with this group. He was extradited to the US, pled guilty, and received a life sentence in late 2023.

Photos provided by the Bolivian Interior Ministry

Antonio Intriago, a Venezuelan-American, was one of the life sentence of the 2019 Venezuela Live Aid concert on the Colombia/Venezuela border, which even mainstream US media admitted was “designed to foment regime change in Venezuela.” Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, originally from Colombia, was a FBI informant whose testimony helped to convict an arms trafficker linked to the communist rebel group, the FARC, in a politically-charged reverse sting operation.

The timing of this group’s operations in Haiti and Bolivia begs the question of whether these men received some outside direction. According to the DOJ, Ortiz and Intriago began this plot against Moïse in February 2021. That’s a quick turnaround time from the alleged plot in Bolivia in October 2020. It also syncs with a rough timeline mentioned in Intriago’s motion on July 3rd to depose “J.C.” Prosecutors assert that Intriago met with J.C. in Bolivia “many months” before the Moïse assassination and he also relied upon J.C. for legal advice.

That document also claims that J.C. is “exiled” in Bolivia. That’s pertinent because informants are usually compelled into that arrangement to avoid prison time and/or earn financial rewards. It’s hard to believe an informant wouldn’t cash in their golden ticket with their American intelligence handlers using the details about an upcoming assassination of a foreign head of state.

The government responded with a variety of statutes in opposition to that motion to depose J.C. However, it’s apropos to point out that the government provided snippets of communications that made him appear like an “unindicted conspirator.” Regardless, the American government seems more intent to protect its sources by redacting J.C.’s information. No arrest warrant/extradition request has been issued.

How much foreknowledge did the US government have? 

The Florida man who this group allegedly planned to install as president, Christian Sanon, announced his intention six weeks before the assassination to lead a three-year transition government in a letter to Julie Chung, then Assistant Secretary for the US State’s Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Still more damning details have since come out in court. Arcangel Pretel Ortiz (then an active FBI informant) and other conspirators met with FBI agents on April 6, 2021. According to the DOJ’s probable cause statement on Feb 10, 2023, Ortiz and the co-conspirators discussed “regime change”:

“Those present attempted to draw the FBI personnel attending the meeting into a discussion about regime change in Haiti. In response, an agent told the men, in substance, that the FBI could not help them because Haiti had to solve its own political problems.”

But the FBI has been tightlipped about the details of the meeting. One week later, Veintemilla’s attorney questioned the FBI’s Mike Ferlazzo about who was in the April 6th meeting. Ferlazzo testified, “We didn’t list the full participants of that meeting.”

Did the US government properly investigate the crime?

 US law enforcement has demonstrated an inexplicably lax response to a case of this magnitude. Veintemilla, Ortiz, and Intriago were each interviewed in South Florida by the FBI in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. However, a search warrant for Ortiz’s home was not executed until the following month.

More perplexing, all three men remained free until being indicted in the Southern District of Florida (Miami) in February 2023. Conversely, their codefendants, Christian Sanon and James Solages (CTU Security’s “authorized representative” in Haiti), were immediately arrested by Haitian authorities and extradited to the US in January 2023.

The judge questioned the federal prosecutor about the obvious flight risk involved. Three of the alleged ringleaders were allowed to remain free for two and a half years before being charged. Assistant U.S Attorney Monica Castro said that they were surveilled, but she also flippantly responded that “the defendants candidly provided false exculpatories and lied about their involvement in the assassination. So the expectation was that these individuals had a false sense of security that perhaps their lies had been believed by law enforcement.”

Original article: thegrayzone.com