A l'attention de mon ami joel

Comment lire ou interpréter cet article du Nouvelliste:


http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article.php?PubID=1&ArticleID=60089&PubDate=2008-07-22

Se sou HAITI-OBSERVATEUR semen pase a mwen te li teks sa a.Pou mwen se yon serpent de mer.

Off the McCain Trail
by Lucy Komisar Jul 15 2008
Jim Courter quits campaign after report of F.C.C. fine.

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Our Man in Haiti: Jim Courter, chief executive of IDT Corp.
Photograph by: Photograph by: Terry Ashe/Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images
IDT Corporation B (IDT)

Industry:
Telecomm
Summary:
A multinational holding company with operations that span several industries.
Primary executive:
James A. Courter,
View Full Profile James A. Courter

Industry:
Telecomm
Biography:
James A. Courter joined the Company in October 1996 and served as President of the Company from October 1996 until July 2001. …
View Full Profile Jim Courter, one of Senator John McCain's top fundraisers, has resigned from the McCain campaign just days after Portfolio.com reported that Courter's company had been fined by regulators.

The Federal Communications Commission last week levied a fine of $1.3 million against IDT, a New Jersey telecommunications company headed by Courter, for failing to disclose its 2003-2004 long-distance phone agreements with Haiti.

Courter's resignation is the latest shake-up among aides and fundraisers to the two presumptive presidential candidates. James Johnson resigned last month from Senator Barack Obama's campaign following disclosures that he had received a mortgage on favorable terms from Countrywide Financial. Samantha Power quit as a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign in March after she was quoted as calling Senator Hillary Clinton "a monster." Recently Phil Gramm had his role as an economic adviser to McCain reduced after he was quoted as playing down the economy's woes, saying that a "nation of whiners" was at fault.

Courter, a former New Jersey Republican congressman, was one of 20 McCain national finance co-chairmen. Before resigning yesterday, he had been with the campaign since February 2007. He was a "trailblazer" for McCain, meaning he raised at least $100,000. The IDT P.A.C. has contributed $84,850 in 2008.

An IDT spokesman said: "Mr. Courter has the utmost respect for the senator and holds him in the highest esteem. As such, Mr. Courter did not desire to see a personal business matter, wholly unrelated to the senator's presidential bid, to detract from the core issues facing the American people."

Calls to the McCain campaign were not immediately returned.

When the F.C.C. forced IDT to file its 2003-2004 telecommunications agreement with Haiti, it showed that IDT had negotiated an illegal long-distance rate, with payments made to a Turks & Caicos shell company instead of a Haiti Telco account in Haiti. The Turks & Caicos attorney who ran the shell company, Mount Salem, says it was owned by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, then president of Haiti.

Testimony by a former IDT official, Michael Jewett, who was fired after he objected to the deal, indicates that the payments to Mount Salem were kickbacks to Aristide. Jewett has filed a lawsuit against the company for unlawful dismissal.

The IDT spokesman said that it was his understanding that Mount Salem was a subsidiary of Haiti Telco.

He said: "IDT has maintained for several years that it has operated with professional and becoming conduct expected of any major U.S. multinational corporation. There is and always has been a relationship of high standing maintained with our governmental channel partner, Haiti Telco.

"As is the practice with any American multinational company conducting business with foreign governments, business contracts are properly and professionally negotiated by management. When a particular government agency identifies in contract its preferred bank account for services rendered, whether those be domestically based or in neighboring financial centers in good standing with that specific country, we, like any other American firm, honor such terms of contract."


Still, the deal raises a number of questions. If a foreign government agency is corrupt and it gives a U.S. company a sweetheart deal, like the below-market rate plan IDT sought to keep secret from the F.C.C. and competitors, a payment to the bank of that government agency's choice might be considered a kickback and a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

And suspicions would certainly be aroused if the bank was in a tax haven and not in the government's own country. Mount Salem's registration papers do not indicate it was a subsidiary of Haiti Telco. Its only legal connection was to a Turks & Caicos law firm.

Portfolio.com's earlier report on the cloudy deal in Haiti can be found here.

McCain 'Trailblazer' Burned
by Lucy Komisar Jul 11 2008
The FCC hits James Courter's IDT with a $1.3M fine for a cloudy deal in Haiti.

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Photograph by: Terry Ashe/Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images
AT&T, Incorporated (T)

Industry:
Telecomm
Summary:
The Company offers telecommunications services and products to consumers in U.S.
Primary executive:
Randall L. Stephenson,
View Full Profile IDT Corporation B (IDT)

Industry:
Telecomm
Summary:
A multinational holding company with operations that span several industries.
Primary executive:
James A. Courter,
View Full Profile IDT, the New Jersey telecommunications outfit run by one of John McCain's top fundraisers, Jim Courter, was fined $1.3 million by the Federal Communications Commission for failing to file a contract for telephone service to Haiti in 2004.

Its work with Haiti has been put under scrutiny since a former employee, Michael Jewett, then IDT's manager for the Caribbean, sued the company. His suit claims he was fired when he balked at negotiating a scheme that routed a portion of the company's long distance revenue from Haiti calls to a shell company owned by then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Jewett's suit alleges that the deal cut IDT's long-distance payments to Haiti to 8.75 cents a minute, from 23 cents, the legal tariff, which mainline U.S. carriers such as AT&T were paying.

Payments went to an offshore shell company, Mount Salem in the Turks & Caicos, which sent 3 cents to Aristide and the rest to the Haiti telecommunications company.

Courter, a former New Jersey Republican congressman, is one of 20 McCain national finance co-chairs, and joined the campaign in February 2007. He's a "Trailblazer" for McCain, meaning he raised at least $100,000. The IDT PAC has contributed $84,850 in 2008.

The F.C.C. said IDT had violated the law by "willfully and repeatedly" failing to file its Haiti agreements regarding rates and other matters.

The filings were required under the commission's International Settlements Policy, which called for the same best rates for all U.S. carriers. The goal was to ensure "a competitive playing field" and prevent dominant carriers on the foreign end of a U.S.-international route from leveraging their market power to the detriment of U.S. carriers and consumers.

IDT had had its share of run-ins with regulators even before the F.C.C. fine handed down Wednesday. Jewett's allegations are also being investigated by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the company's filings with the S.E.C. The I.R.S. is also reportedly looking at the company, according to published reports.

An IDT spokesperson declined to comment.

Adrian Corr, a Turks & Caicos lawyer who was legal counsel for Aristide at Miller Simons O'Sullivan and who ran Mount Salem, confirmed that Aristide owned the shell.

Jewett's lawyer, seeking to read the Haiti contracts at the Federal Communications Commission, discovered that the entire file had disappeared. The F.C.C. directed IDT and other carriers to refile their contracts. IDT's showed payments to the Turks & Caicos shell company.

Jewett's suit charges that IDT evaded the rules and kept competitors in the dark. Documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests this year also revealed that IDT failed to file contracts with dozens of other telecoms around the world.

The S.E.C. and I.R.S. are looking into IDT's tax returns for 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Any discount or ill-gotten gain, such as the difference between 8.75 and 23 cents, is taxable.

In a quarterly S.E.C. report filed June 6, IDT's balance sheet shows $365 million "income taxes payable," meaning the sum is put aside for back taxes. The figure was zero last year.

All the executives below Courter involved with the Haiti deal are gone. The June report announced the "involuntary" departure of the chief legal officer.

Top-tier Republicans have also bailed out.

William Weld, former G.O.P. governor of Massachusetts, was head of corporate governance at IDT but resigned after the Jewett complaint was unsealed in July 2005.

IDT announced in October 2006 that its entire board would not seek reelection, including former congressman and vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, former Minnesota Senator Rudy Boschwitz, and former Washington Senator Slade Gorton.

"Why do you put very powerful politicians on your board. Because you like them, you think they’re capable and they buy you protection," said Herbert Denton, president of the New York investment firm Providence Capital, which owned IDT stock. "Why do they leave at the same time? I speculate there’s something rotten in Denmark."






Most recent comments: Posted: Jul 16 2008 6:01pm ET
McCain should be asked to return all contributions stolen from Haiti. The IDT PAC contributed $84,850 in 2008 alone. How much of that originated from its deal with Aristide whereby it only paid 8.75 cents per minute when it should have been paying 23 cents? All that money was paid out by Haitian-Americans calling their relatives in Haiti and should have gone to the national phone company Teleco.
By JamesMorrell
Report AbusePosted: Jul 15 2008 8:20pm ET
Since 1994, (following the US invasion of the iland by the Clinton's troops to restore Aristide in power), Haiti is at the center of american politics from the left to the right. No one never understands such interests generated by a such a poverish country.
Yves Germain
By YvesGermain
Recommended by 1 Users
Report AbusePosted: Jul 12 2008 00:33am ET
There are telecommunications opportunities in Haiti with 8 million people.. but the carriers have to do it the correct and legal way like www.digicelgroup.com did. Digicel Trippled their inventments in Haiti.
By harry

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