TelecomTiger Correspondent | | 22 May 2012
A former top Haiti’s telecom company official has been sentenced to prison for nine years by a Miami federal judge in a bribery case that legal sources say is now focusing on deposed Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, according to Miami Herald.
The court described as “ludicrous” his testimony that the bribes he took from two Miami businesses were gifts for doing such a good job for them.
“It’s perjurious,” U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez said of Jean Rene Duperval’s trial testimony in March. Duperval testified that the nearly $500,000 in bribes he received from two local telecom contractors were “tokens of appreciation.”
The judge’s finding of obstruction of justice, along with other factors such as the amount of the kickbacks, doubled Duperval’s sentencing under federal guidelines. Martinez ordered Duperval, 45, to pay the kickback amount to the U.S. government. The defendant used some of the money to buy his Miramar home and finance his three children’s Florida Prepaid College Plans, prosecutors said.
Duperval was found guilty of money laundering offenses by a U.S. jury in March, one of eight people convicted so far in a massive case brought by the Justice Department under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. One former U.S. telecommunications executive, Joel Esquenazi, received a 15 year sentence, the longest ever imposed under that anti-corruption law, federal prosecutors said.
Testifying in his defense, Duperval insisted the payments through shell companies he controlled from Miami based Cinergy Telecommunications and Terra Telecommunications were not bribes but only “tokens of appreciation” for doing his job well. Martinez called that testimony “ludicrous” before finding Duperval had committed perjury on the witness stand, grounds for adding to his sentence.
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COMMENT: HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
Jean Rene Duperval and his mother, Marie-Therese, are pigs. They were supported by Dupervil’s aunt, Yolande, for years. Yolande had been an Ambassador to Belgium, under Duvalier. When Yolande fell on hard times, losing everything, Jean-Rene Duperval was a chief with TELECO, under Aristide, stealing millions of dollars US.
One day, his aunt asked him for $100 Haitian to buy her medicine,(about $20.00 US) and he refused. Because she was now “poor” her sister and nephew, along with his extravagant wife, effectively turned their backs on Yolande.
Without the help of a ferw friends, Yolande would have been homeless even as her sister – a well known Haitian doctor, and Duperval, a now know major criminal, rolled in money.
Duperval had an expensive home in Pembroke Pines, with four high-end cars in the driveway, including a Lexus SUV, a Mercedes sportscar, another Mercedes and an expensive American vehicle.
Duperval’s wife referred to herself as “a queen” and refused to wear dresses, or shop at local stors, such as Macy’s, Nieman Marcus, Bloomingdales. Instead, she would fly a seamstress from Africa, to sew her dresses and, should the lady bring the wrong colored thread, our extravagant “queen” would send the lady back to Africa.
Children in extravantly expensive schools.
And never a penny of help for the lady who had made this all possible.
Yolande died poor and they didn’t even want to hire a musician for her funeral. An outraged friend covered the cost, to send her off properly.
All of these things should be considered, when thinking of a reduction of sentence for Jean Rene Duperval, received for his theft of millions from Haiti’s coffers.
May Jean-Rene Duperval rot in his cell for the full nine years, targeted by whatever sex freaks populate his prison. His term should be followed by deportation to Haiti.
May his extravagant wife be reduced to working somewhere, as a waitress…or, perhaps something lower.
Yolande was a class act and society is less without her.
Marie-Therese, her son Jean-Rene Duperval, and his children, could all die tomorrow and society would have lost nothing.