Special Reports - Star's Candidacy in Haiti Puts Focus on Charity

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Posted August 18, 2010

International

Star's Candidacy in Haiti Puts Focus on Charity

RAMON ESPINOSA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The singer Wyclef Jean, center, surrounded by reporters on Aug. 5 as he waited to submit the paperwork to run for president in Port-au-Prince.

By DEBORAH SONTAG

and STEPHANIE STROM

CROIX DES BOUQUETS, Haiti - A few months before Wyclef Jean, the hip-hop star, declared his candidacy for president of Haiti, the representative of a struggling tent camp made a pilgrimage to the new headquarters of Mr. Jean's charity. He arrived, hat in hand, at the eight-acre compound the charity leased after a fund-raising bonanza in response to the Jan. 12 earthquake.

But the representative, Carel Calixte of the Christ Roi camp, could not get past the gate of the $15,000-a-month property, where grapefruit and palm trees surround an unfilled swimming pool and two model homes for the homeless sit empty. So, accepting a vague promise of assistance, he left.

No help ever arrived, Mr. Calixte and other leaders at Christ Roi said, even though the charity, Yéle Haiti, lists their camp among several dozen it supports. Yéle's president, Hugh Locke, provided dates of several water deliveries to Christ Roi. But camp leaders insist that their water has been supplied not by Yéle but by two other nonprofit groups.

At least four more camps that Yéle claims to support also maintain that they have received nothing from Yéle - "Not even a cookie!" Ricardo Dorvelus, a camp leader, said - and still others characterize Yéle's assistance as short-lived or token, like the television donated to one camp that broke halfway through the World Cup.

Mr. Jean, who is considered a potential front-runner in the campaign, said his charity was saving lives, especially in "the roughest communities." He dismissed the accounts from camp leaders as "hearsay" that reflected "the overall fear and anger in these camps after nearly seven months of hardship and fear."

BRENNAN LINSLEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Angelina Jolie, left, joined Wyclef Jean in Port-au-Prince in 2006 for the first anniversary party for Mr. Jean's charity, Yéle Haiti.

Mr. Jean also expressed displeasure that his presidential bid has renewed scrutiny of his charity and its history of poor financial management "at a time when I am trying to make a genuine difference."

How Mr. Jean, a celebrity with no experience in politics, has guided Yéle Haiti offers one barometer of his ability to lead. The earthquake raised the musician's profile and brought his small nonprofit group more than $10.5 million through July 31, of which just under a third has been spent, according to the charity.

In the past, Mr. Jean blurred boundaries between his personal, business and philanthropic enterprises. His charity paid his production company for benefit concerts featuring Mr. Jean, and paid his Haitian television station for promotions that also featured him. After the earthquake, the television station, its building badly damaged, broadcast rent-free from Yéle's new estate.

Derek Q. Johnson, who became Yéle's chief executive this month after Mr. Jean stepped down to run for president, said, "On the whole, it's clear that missteps have been made, both in execution and in judgment, some of which apparently are still unfolding."

On Monday, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR announced that it had resigned from all public relations work for Yéle and Mr. Jean's campaign. The firm offered no explanation.

To his many ardent supporters here, Mr. Jean's championing of the Haitian cause is more important than any missteps at Yéle - and Mr. Jean has acknowledged making mistakes.

Jocelyn Augustin, 38, a pregnant mother of three who lives in a miserable camp beside a municipal dump, said she idolized Mr. Jean even before his charity gave the camp's residents tents branded with the Yéle logo. "After God is Wyclef," she said.

To Mr. Jean's skeptics, indications that he has poorly handled money at Yéle and in his personal life - with $2.1 million in tax liens against his house in Saddle River, N.J., which Mr. Jean says he is addressing, and an unfinished Miami mansion lost to foreclosure - raise concerns about a presidential candidate for a shattered country pledged billions in reconstruction aid.

After the earthquake, it was widely reported that Yéle's 2006 tax filing revealed $350,000 in questionable payments to two companies that Mr. Jean and his cousin control, including $250,000 to a Haitian television station they had just acquired.

But the story behind that $250,000 transaction is more complex.

It starts with Angelina Jolie, pregnant at the time, who agreed to let a photographer friend of Mr. Jean take pictures of her "baby bump" in January 2006 and sell them to raise money for Yéle. People magazine then made a contribution to Yéle in exchange for the photographs, a spokeswoman confirmed. It brought the charity $600,000, two people with knowledge of the arrangement said.

That same month, Yéle sent $250,000 to Mr. Jean's television station, Telemax, according to a bank statement. The expense was listed on the charity's tax forms as a pre-purchase for production services and airtime for Yéle "outreach efforts."

Those efforts consisted primarily of promotional events featuring Mr. Jean. A spreadsheet listing the videos' titles includes "Wyclef Jean with Angelina"; "Wyclef Jean and Akon"; and "Wyclef Jean and Matt Damon."

Mr. Johnson, Yéle's new chief executive, reviewed the videos and said that he had doubts about calling them charity, saying "it does strain credibility to suggest that the tapes depict 'a wide range of development and social issues in Haiti.'"

'I'm not sure they would meet my definition of programming that speaks to the social needs of the Haitian people," Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Jean said "it's a debatable conversation" whether the programming advanced Yéle's mission, but he defended it as educational. "Culture is part of the youth population in Haiti," he said.

Even at the time, Yéle officials did not believe prepaying for promotional videos was justified, according to Sanjay Rawal, the charity's director from 2004 through 2005 and a board member afterward.

But Yéle needed a way to account for $250,000 that Mr. Jean, through the check to Telemax, had used to help cover the costs of a carnival float, Mr. Rawal said.

The float featured Mr. Jean in a frilly blouse and gilded epaulettes as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian revolutionary hero. Mr. Jean also imported a lion for the spectacle, keeping it in the parking lot of the Montana Hotel, now destroyed, where the kitchen crew fed the beast sirloin steaks.

Mr. Jean denied this allegation, saying it came from disgruntled ex-employees. He said Voilà , a cellphone company for which he served as spokesman, had a "majority sponsorship of the float."

Bradley J. Horwitz, chief executive officer of Trilogy International Partners, which owns Voilà , said the company had "sponsored Carnaval and Wyclef through a sponsorship with Telemax," though he did not provide specific information.

But Mr. Rawal said he knew "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that the $250,000 had covered expenses for the float, which incurred damages during the carnival. A second individual with knowledge of the transaction, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, provided the same account of events.

How Yéle has performed in the aftermath of the quake is difficult to gauge. The organization declined to provide a financial breakdown of its programs and services. And since Yéle chooses to operate outside the network of nonprofit groups here, well-established organizations say they are unaware of its activities.

"We're not a massive organization raising $100 million or $250 million," Mr. Jean said, "but what we have I'm proud of."

Large organizations like the World Food Program, which once relied on Yéle to help distribute food in volatile slum areas, have not worked with the charity since the earthquake, saying it "requires partners with extensive experience and infrastructure."

But Yéle has distributed significant quantities of food, water and tents, Mr. Locke said, as well as donating $500,000 for a high-resolution CT scanner and forming a partnership with others on an environmental program.

Yéle has also prepaid for 100 transitional shelters, at $2,880 each, which is more than twice what other groups have been paying. But the shelters cannot be erected until the government allocates land - which Mr. Locke says is unlikely now that Mr. Jean is running.

On Tuesday, the elections board is scheduled to disclose the candidates who have qualified to run. Mr. Jean, who was born in Haiti but moved to Brooklyn as a child, says he fits the citizenship requirement because he holds a Haitian passport. The residency requirement - five consecutive years before the Nov. 28 election - might be more difficult.

If Mr. Jean does qualify, some here worry that he will enlist Yéle in his campaign, which would violate American tax law governing charitable assets.

"It is problematic if he uses this money, which historically has not been well spent, for political purposes," said Mario Joseph, a Haitian human rights lawyer.

In early July, Mr. Jean held a traffic-stopping rally to kick off a job creation program called Yéle Corps. Yéle paid 200 people $7 each to surround him at the event and to pick up some garbage afterward. Then the workers were dismissed because the program had not yet been fully planned.

Among those vying for the first Yéle street-cleaning jobs at a recent sign-up was Benilhomme Joastin, 75. He said that he was asked for what he called his electoral card to register, and that those without such cards were turned away. What many Haitians refer to as their electoral card is simply their national identification card, yet Mr. Joastin still perceived the request as political and shrugged it off.

Even if Yéle takes pains to distance its programs from Mr. Jean, he said, Haitians know the charity as his.

"Wyclef is Yéle; Yéle is Wyclef," said Prénord Joseph, a leader of the Fontamara tent camp. When Mr. Joseph helps Yéle distribute water at his camp, he does not demand electoral support for Mr. Jean, he said.

"But the result of getting those services is that the people will vote for Wyclef," he said, adding, "We take off our shirt for the person who sweats for us."

Deborah Sontag reported from Croix des Bouquets, and Stephanie from New York. Vladimir Laguerre contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, International, of Tuesday, August 17, 2010.

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