Haiti needs electricity: Hillary gives them a sweatshop

Until Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti nearly a month ago, on October 4, the impoverished island country was out of the headlines—pushed aside by election news.

But new emails — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and then shared with ABC News, then made public on October 11 — make Haiti part of the U.S. election news, as they highlight the cozy connections between the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and the Clinton’s cronies. The corruption that has been brought to light is nothing short of scandalous—though, since it’s merely one more such story, few are probably following it.

I’m aware of this new information due to my multi-year collaboration with Christine Lakatos and her Green Corruption Files. She alerted me to the “bombshell new evidence” and she now has a full 26-page report available.

Hurricane Matthew made clear that the billions of dollars that poured into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake did little to help the 1.5 million people who were displaced when the 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed their homes in 2010. According to the New York Times, 55,000 people were still living in shelters when Matthew hit.

However, earlier this year, HBO’s VICE news magazine series did a segment titled: The Haitian Moneypit. In it, Vikram Gandhi takes viewers through the deplorable conditions found in the refugee camps that have no electricity, fresh water, or functioning toilets.

He claims: “Hundreds of thousands of survivors are still displaced.”

Gandhi says that despite the $10 billion in relief that came into Haiti after the earthquake, “many parts of Port-au-Prince still look like the earthquake struck just yesterday.” He addresses the Zoranje model home project—described as a $2.4 million showroom and the first approved reconstruction project headed by Bill Clinton and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.

The problem, Gandhi reports, is that the homes were unsuited to Haiti. Once the expo was over, zero homes were built for Haitians. Today the model homes are occupied by squatters who live in the makeshift village without plumbing or electricity. 

Perhaps the homes were never built because the companies didn’t donate, or didn’t donate enough, to the Clinton Foundation. In his film Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer relays a story about a Florida firm with extensive disaster relief experience. The company spent $100 million getting equipment into Haiti, but only made a small contribution to the Clinton Foundation. The company didn’t get any relief contracts. Many contracts went to relief organizations that were also involved in the Clinton Foundation—which brags about its role in Haiti.

Lakatos explains: “In digging through over 1,000 emails from Hillary’s State Department related to Haiti, I discovered additional damning proof that the Haiti ‘reconstruction plan’ was a huge pay-to-play scheme for filling the coffers of the Clintons and their cronies.” She continues: “We now have an ocean of evidence confirming that our former president Bill Clinton and his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, exploited the poor Haitian people in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.”

In 2015, in an article titled The King and Queen of Haiti, Politico summarizes: “The amounts of money over which the Clintons and their foundation had direct control paled beside the $16.3 billion that donors pledged in all.”

While Lakatos’ complete report provides details with links to the supporting documentation, due to space here, I am jumping to, what I believe is, the most dramatic example: The Caracol Industrial Park (CIP)—a $300 million project that was planned before the 2010 earthquake and was built in a part of Haiti that was not impacted by the earthquake (therefore not helping the victims). The CIP was originally lauded by Secretary Clinton as creating 100,000 new jobs in Haiti, but got revised down and down—with current jobs at a dim 8,000 to 9,000 jobs.

The commingling of players, companies, and organizations is overwhelming—but one of Hillary Clinton’s closest confidants, Cheryl Mills, is at the center of it. Addressing the project and the Clinton’s “public-private web,” the New York Times (NYT) states: “Cheryl D. Mills worked ceaselessly to help a South Korean garment maker open a factory in Haiti, the centerpiece of United States government’s efforts to jump-start the island nation’s economy after the 2010 earthquake.” 

In short, “Sea-A Trading secured millions of dollars in incentives to make its Haiti investment more attractive,” writes the NYT. Sea-A Trading’s chairman Woong-ki Kim became a Clinton Foundation donor after his firm secured the lucrative contract in Haiti. The NYT calls Kim “the sort of enlightened global capitalist the Clintons favor.”

Adding to the intrigue, when Mills left the State Department, she started a company called BlackIvy Group—for which Kim is a financial backer. The NYT describes the relationship this way: “The partnership with Mr. Kim sheds light on the business activities of Ms. Mills—a longtime Clinton loyalist who is likely to play a significant role in any future Clinton White House—as well as the interlocking public and private relationships that have long characterized the Clintons’ inner circle.”

The company makes clothes using Haiti’s cheap labor, reportedly paying about $6.85 a day—but there are reports that claim the factory doesn’t pay that much and accuse the factory of sexual harassment, bullying, and humiliation.

Workers complain that after they pay for lunch and transportation, they don’t have enough money left to feed their families. Many feel that they were better off farming the land they were thrown off of to make room for CIP.

The primarily female workforce makes clothes for large American retailers, including Wal-Mart and Gap Inc., which get special tax breaks for importing the clothes made in Haiti.  Both companies are Clinton Foundation donors: Wal-Mart has given $1 million to $5 million, and Gap has given between $250,000 and $500,000 to the foundation. 

Part of the $124 million in “incentives” the U.S. government provided (an unwitting donation from taxpayers) for CIP was to build a power plant to run the factory. While I have been unable to ascertain what fuels the plant, video makes it clear it is not wind or solar that Clinton touts. My research revealed: “Haiti is highly dependent on imported fossil fuels for electric generation.” It is most likely oil-fueled. 

The electricity provided by the Caracol Electrification Project also powers some of the surrounding communities. The USAID site features stories of people living with electricity for the first time and elaborates on the dramatic improvement in health and quality of life since the area has reliable power. Many other similar reports exist. 

A few months ago, Lakatos and I wrote about Hillary’s clean cookstove initiative: The developing world wants natural gas and electricity; Hillary Clinton sends cookstoves. This story is similar. Haiti needs electricity, and Hillary gives them a sweatshop.

Considering the conditions in the Sea-A Trading factory and the hundreds of thousands of people throughout Haiti living in plastic tents and without electricity and the benefits it provides—one must wonder if the hundreds of millions of dollars that went to enriching Clinton Foundation donors, like Kim, wouldn’t have been better spent providing reliable fossil-fuel power to the people of Haiti.

Doing so would have boosted the economy and helped families improve their lives. But that’s not how the Clintons operate, and their fingerprints are all over the Haiti recovery efforts. Obviously, they have hurt the Haitian people, while helping themselves and their friends. 

On November 8, America will decide if this is the kind of leadership we want.