A Clean Pair of Hands (24 page)

REPORT

Date: 2014

To: Patrick Mastrolli

From: Eugène Kotor

In answer to your hypothetical questions, here are my thoughts:

Identity Change:
It would be relatively easy for a European with enough cash to obtain a new identity here. At least a new passport and driving licence could be provided for a credible third country nationality, (i.e. not Haitian) and that should be enough for international travel and to open bank accounts.

Ideal location:
Next to Haiti, sharing the same island is the Dominican Republic (DR). It’s a different world to Haiti and has become a major Caribbean tourist resort. I know from personal experience that it is easy to open bank accounts there. The DR is a preferred money laundering centre for Columbian drug cartels and about eight per cent of cocaine entering the USA comes from there.
The southern part is heavily populated, but if you were looking for a quiet place to hide, the northern coastal area is quieter and there is some nice land for development at Puerto Plata, for example.

Feasibility:
It would be easy for a European to fly out of Haiti to say Miami, on one identity, and fly back to the Dominican Republic on another. Alternatively, from the northern coast of Haiti, you could just sail east and land in DR. There is no sophisticated immigration control, at least for whites, and a small amount of money goes a long way.

Miscellaneous information:
I thought this was all I would have to say on the subject, but then I found out that Madame Ayida Mendes was in Haiti, at Port de Paix recently. She is an almost white Haitian creole, still very pretty, though she must be well into her 50s. The Mendeses were friends of the Bodins and had also tried to buy land here almost next to the tract the Bodins rented. While she was here, Madame Mendes tried to visit a Madame Cassandra Mantou, a forty-year-old Haitian widow, and a very attractive one, I was told. Her husband was shot and killed in some sort of turf war down in the south. However, the important bit is that when Ayida Mendes was enquiring after Cassandra Mantou, she described her as a friend of Monsieur Bodin.

I don’t know what importance that might have, but consider this: Madame Mantou has disappeared, said to be visiting relatives in the mountainous Cotes de Fer area, which is completely inaccessible even for aid workers, so I think that story is unlikely. Could Madame Mantou have gone off with Monsieur Bodin? Not to DR, because blacks are not welcome there and have been persistently persecuted or sent back to Haiti by successive governments.

My reading of the situation is that Madame Mantou may have been helpful to Monsieur Bodin in some way, but for what, and when? If, as you say, he could still be alive, is there a connection? And if there is a connection he may have rewarded her with enough money to enable her to set up somewhere else, possibly in Haiti, but more likely in the USA or Canada. I doubt they are together, though I may be wrong. There is no evidence either way at the moment. This is pure speculation on my part. The fact that they may have been friends before he died/disappeared is not of itself a lead, but her disappearance raises questions, though it does not yet shed any light on Michel Bodin’s fate.

One more point is that the nice wooden house Monsieur Bodin had built on his rented land is now occupied by a Haitian family and no Europeans have been there since Madame Alvarez died. I am not washing my hands of this subject, but there is no more I can do for now. I will let you know if anything interesting is brought to my attention about these people.

Important note:
I had to go to the US embassy in Port au Prince to send this, so you may appear on WikiLeaks before long.

(PS Thanks for the package)

Signed EK.

THE END

Aaron Brake

Albert Camus

Ambrose Bierce

Andrew Carnegie

Anne-Marie Carrière

Clément Weill-Raynal

Denis Diderot

Der Speigel

Ernst Fehr

Euripides

François Mitterrand

Fyodor Dostyevski

Jacques Chirac

Jacques Dutronc

Jean Montaldo

Jaqueline Bisset

Karl Marx

Le Canard Enchainé

Le Figaro

Mahatma Ghandi

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

Napoleon Bonaparte

Radio France Culture

Sigmund Freud

The Daily Mail

Thomas Jefferson

Transparency International

US Embassy, Port au Prince, Haiti

Wikipedia