Icky to some, ‘diamonds’ to others: How eels figure into money laundering in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE — In Japan, a prepared dish costs up to $90 a plate, while in the northeastern United States they are worth thousands of dollars a pound, fresh out of the water.

But the gross-looking, wriggly fish that has become both a delicacy — and a currency — known as zangi in Haitian-Creole, is also fueling a new kind of illicit trafficking in the volatile Caribbean nation, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Zangi, or eel, is fueling a booming wildlife crime business in Haiti, where illegal high-powered weapons from the United States and U.S.-bound Colombian-cocaine were already compounding an unprecedented security crisis. “There is growing evidence that several Haitian nationals are part of a wider criminal network connected to lucrative eel trafficking, operating in Haiti and beyond,” Ghada Waly, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said. “Some reports indicate that powerful political and economic figures in Haiti use the eel industry to launder drug profits.”

Waly didn’t go into details. But U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Haiti have long flagged concerns to their bosses in the Caribbean and Washington about suspected drug traffickers in Haiti branching out into eel trafficking both to hide drug proceeds and to move cocaine out of the country by stashing loads among the elongated fish. Now after not getting much attention, the accelerating trade, which is legal, is getting a deeper look. In October, when the U.N. voted unanimously to expand an arms embargo on Haiti to include all types of weapons and ammunition, they also mentioned sanctioning those “engaging in activities that destabilize Haiti through the illicit exploitation or trade of natural resources.”