The Miami Herald – BY JAY WEAVER – February 21, 2012

A federal prosecutor Tuesday recommended cutting one-time Haitian drug
lord Jacques Ketant’s 27-year prison sentence by half, citing his
?invaluable information? that helped authorities convict a dozen
fellow traffickers, politicians and police officers from Haiti.

But U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno delayed his decision, saying
he wants more details about the government?s attempt to recover $15
million in drug profits from Ketant, who was convicted in 2003 of
smuggling 30 tons of cocaine into South Florida and New York.

Moreno also inquired about the status of Ketant’s Port-au-Prince
mansion as well as an art collection of more than 200 paintings that
boasted a Monet.

“It should be worth at least a million dollars,” Moreno said of the
painting by the French Impressionist painter. “You don’t know where
the Monet is?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Kirkpatrick said the U.S. government
already seized the Monet, was able to recover only a small portion of
the drug profits, and that Ketant’s mansion was turned over to the
Haitian government.

Ketant’s attorney, Ruben Oliva, said: “He’s got nothing left.”

But the judge really caught the prosecutor and defense attorney by
surprise when he disclosed that he had recently received a letter from
a man who said Ketant was responsible for the alleged 1997 killing of
his mother in South Florida, according to Moreno, who did not disclose
names nor file the letter in the court record.

In court, Kirkpatrick said she was unfamiliar with the murder
allegation and Oliva said it was unfounded.

The judge ordered both sides to address his questions within two weeks
before he holds another hearing on the proposed sentence reduction for
Ketant, who is imprisoned in Arkansas.

Ketant, 48, had lived as a virtually untouchable kingpin in his
hilltop mansion overlooking Port-au-Prince. In 2003, Haitian President
Jean Bertrand Aristide expelled him under U.S. pressure because
Ketant?s bodyguards beat up an official at a private school attended
by children of U.S. Embassy personnel.

That extraordinary move by Aristide allowed federal authorities to put
Ketant on a plane for Miami and charge him with conspiring to ship
loads of Colombian cocaine through Haiti by paying off island
officials and police officers.

?When he arrived in the United States, [Haiti] was probably the first
true narco-state,? said Oliva, who urged the judge to cut Ketant?s
sentence by more than half. ?He was cooperating not only against
fellow drug traffickers but also government officials.?

Ketant, who pleaded guilty soon after his expulsion, grabbed center
stage in the government?s drug-trafficking investigation in the days
leading up to Aristide?s sudden departure as president in February
2004.

At his sentencing that month in Miami federal court, the flamboyant
Ketant made a stunning allegation: He said he could not have directed
his cocaine-smuggling network without paying millions in bribes to his
friend Aristide. Ketant accused the president of turning Haiti into a
narco-country.

Aristide’s attorney, Ira Kurzban, has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The feds focused for years on Ketant’s allegation of paying off
Aristide, but agents struggled to uncover any evidence such as
financial records to prove it, according to law enforcement sources
familiar with the case.

Last year, Aristide emerged from exile in South Africa and returned to Haiti.

But Ketant’s inside information helped the feds gain momentum to
prosecute about 50 defendants from Haiti  including Aristide’s
security chief at the presidential palace.