HAITI: Toto Constant - GUILTY

[magbana]

Haitian paramilitary leader Emmanuel Constant convicted of fraud
By SCOTT SHIFREL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, July 25th 2008, 2:15 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/07/25/2008-07-25_haitian_paramilitary_leader_emmanuel_con.html

A former paramilitary leader convicted of human rights abuses in Haiti was
convicted Friday of mortgage fraud in Brooklyn.

Emmanuel (Toto) Constant, 51, faces 5-to-15 years in prison in New York before
being sent back to Haiti to serve a life sentence.

"He came here and lived a whole new life but it was just as fraudulent as the
one he lived in Haiti," Deputy Attorney General Thomas Schellhammer said after
a Constant was convicted of six counts of grand larceny and mortgage fraud.

Justice Abraham Gerges will decide if Constant's Haiti conviction should be
considered when he is sentenced for using straw buyers in three Brooklyn
property sales.

The one-time head of the paramilitary group known as FRAPH who was convicted
and sentenced in absentia in Haiti in 2000, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s
and went to real estate school.
Constant was arrested with 40 others in a mortgage scam in 2006, but a plea
deal was nixed once his human rights abuses became public.

Many prosecution witnesses in the three-week-long trial - investors,
appraisers, title company employees, brokers and loan officials - were involved
in the mortgage scam.

"For a long time banks have looked the other way," Schellhammer said. "Anyone
who picked up the newspaper in the last year can see what has happened to the
industry because of this."

Constant has insisted that others broke the law - much as he has insisted
others did the killings in Haiti - and believes he should have been allowed to
take the plea deal, his lawyer said.
"The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," defense
lawyer Samuel Karliner said. "His role was minor."

Human rights observers applauded the jury's quick verdict and said Constant
should be sent back to Haiti.

Today's conviction showed Constant to be the crook that he is," Jennie Green of
the Center for Constitutional Rights. "His victims hope that he will soon be
brought to justice for his crimes in Haiti that included the murder and rape
and torture of thousands more."

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[struggle4progress]

1. Values: "Kill Haitians, OK -- but mess with my money and you're going to jail"

[Judi Lynn]

2. You've got it! Kill until you can't kill any more, but touch my money and you're dead meat!

It's gratifying they found him guilty, however. I will be wanting to believe they won't spirit him out of jail before the end of his sentence so he won't have to stand trial in Haiti.

They've protected this monster for years, keeping him on ice in case they needed him again, just like the last time. Hard to believe they'd allow the people of Haiti he has victimized to have the chance to put him where he belongs, at long last.

Good death squad leaders are so hard to find.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks for the news, magbana. He's guilty, and so are the scum in government who have used him

to slaughter the poor of his country, to get dissenters out of the way, and terrorize the survivors to the point they are compliant.