Defense Minister Lieutenant General Carlos Antonio Fernández Onofre met with Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for Haiti and head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), at the Ministry of Defense (MIDE) headquarters in Santo Domingo last week.
The meeting focused on international cooperation, border security, and coordinating multilateral efforts to address the Haitian crisis. Attendees included BINUH chief of staff William P. Gardner, political officer Caroline McQueen, and Gilberto Núñez from the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
Fernández Onofre emphasized that the Ministry of Defense is maintaining constant vigilance and readiness, and that it values cooperation with the UN to find sustainable solutions.
The meeting comes as the United States announced its support for UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s proposal to create a UN Support Office. This office would provide logistical and financial backing to the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, an operation that has been struggling with a lack of funds and equipment.
The meeting took place at the same time that news stories from Haiti say that the current transition government of Haiti, in charge of organizing general elections in the country, would have contracted the controversial prominent Donald Trump supporter and private security executive Erik Prince’s Vectus Global to control gangs and ensure collection of tax revenues at the border with the Dominican Republic, Reuters reports.
The current transitional president of Haiti is businessperson Laurent Saint-Cyr, who assumed the role on 7 August 2025. He is the final head of the Transitional Presidential Council, which is tasked with leading the country through a transition period and towards scheduled elections.
Nevertheless, Diario Libre reports that the outgoing transitional president of Haiti, Fritz Alphonse Jean has denied he had signed and warned that any contracting of this nature needs to follow the formal mechanisms and a tender that has not happened in Haiti.
Because of the lack of security in Haiti, Dominican vendors drop off their cargo at the border and this is then transfered to Haitian vehicles that deliver the load in Haiti.
As reported in international media, Haitian the transition government would have delegated the control of the country’s border revenue stream through a 10-year deal through which mercenaries under Erik Prince’s Vectus Global would fight the country’s criminal gangs, and then take a role in restoring the country’s tax-collection system.
In an interview with Reuters, Prince said his company, Vectus Global, would be involved in designing and implementing a program to tax goods imported across Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic once the security situation is stabilized.
Fighters would be from the United States, Europe and El Salvador. Prince is optimistic he can deliver the stabilized border in a year’s time. As reported, the private force would intensify the fight against gangs with snipers, helicopters and boats.
The announcement comes at around the same time the US government has announced a bounty of US$5 million for information leading to the capture of Barbecue, or 48-year old Jimmy Cherizier.
The US Department of Justice revealed last week that an indictment was unsealed on 12 August 2025 in US District Court in Washington DC charging Jimmy Cherizier, 48, of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Bazile Richardson, 48, a naturalized US citizen, with leading a conspiracy to transfer funds from the United States to Cherizier, aka “Barbecue,” to fund his gang activities in Haiti in violation of the U.S sanctions imposed on Cherizier, announced US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
In the same press release, the US Department of State’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program announced it is offering a reward of up to US$5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Cherizier.
“There’s a good reason that there’s a $5 million reward for information leading to Cherizier’s arrest. He’s a gang leader responsible for heinous human rights abuses, including violence against American citizens in Haiti,” said U.S. Attorney Pirro in the US Department of Justice press release. The press release explains: “The US government sanctioned Cherizier in 2020 because he was responsible for an ongoing campaign of violence, including the 2018 La Saline massacre, in which 71 people were killed, more than 400 houses were destroyed, and at least seven women raped by armed gangs. The US Attorney’s office is committed to apprehending Cherizier and bringing him to justice, along with individuals like defendant Richardson, who has sent money and other support to Cherizier from the United States in violation of US sanctions. Our office is committed to keeping Americans safe anywhere in the world, and the gang violence that has ravaged Haiti must end.”
Read more:
Diario Libre
Reuters
First Post
Aljazeera
Haitian Times
Haitian Times
New York Times
US Justice Department
18 August 2025