Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021 by a team of mostly Colombian mercenaries recruited through a Florida security firm, with the masterminds who ordered and financed it still contested
That President Jovenel Moïse was deliberately assassinated in his home by a team of foreign mercenaries, mostly former Colombian soldiers, who were recruited and organized through a Florida-based private security firm; and, in the wider and disputed reading, that the operation was commissioned and financed by powerful figures, in Haiti or abroad, whose identities the prosecutions have not conclusively fixed.
Believed by: That Moïse was assassinated by a mostly Colombian mercenary team is the mainstream account, backed by courts in two countries. The competing claims about who was truly behind it, from the officials and businessmen named in various filings to the annulled Haitian indictment, remain contested and unproven.
On the fifth anniversary of the assassination, relatives, supporters, and Haitian officials held memorial ceremonies and renewed calls for justice, according to The Haitian Times, which reported that Haiti's own investigation, now before a sixth judge, has still produced no trial or convictions. The contrast between the US convictions and the stalled domestic case underscores that both tracks remain active and that the question of who ordered the killing is still unresolved in law. source →
A federal jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida convicted four defendants, CTU owners Antonio Intriago and Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, financier Walter Veintemilla, and CTU associate James Solages, on conspiracy and material-support charges tied to the plot to kill or kidnap Moïse, according to the Department of Justice. The verdict, which followed roughly nine weeks of testimony, brought to ten the number of defendants convicted in the US case. It reinforces the documented account of the mercenary operation and its Florida recruiters, but no court identified who ultimately ordered or financed the assassination, so the mastermind question, and this file's rating, are unchanged. source →
The full story
What is documented
Start with what the courts have settled. Shortly after one o'clock in the morning on 7 July 2021, an armed team entered the private residence of President Jovenel Moïse in Pèlerin 5, a district of fortified villas in the hills above Pétion-Ville and the capital, Port-au-Prince. Some of the attackers shouted in English that this was a US Drug Enforcement Administration operation, an apparent ruse. They shot Moïse roughly a dozen times, killing him, and gravely wounded First Lady Martine Moïse, who was later flown to Florida for treatment.
Within days, Haitian security forces had killed three of the assailants and captured most of the rest. The great majority were former Colombian Army soldiers; a small number were Haitian-Americans. Reporting by The Intercept and others quickly traced their recruitment to a Miami-area security company, CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit), which had signed the men up, in several cases over WhatsApp, on the promise of about $3,000 a month. Some later said they believed they had been hired to protect Haitian officials, not to storm a presidential home.
So the question this file weighs is not whether Moïse was assassinated, or by whom at the operational level. He plainly was, and the mercenary team and its Florida recruiter are documented. The open question is the layer above them: who conceived the plot, who paid for it, and what the real objective was.
The prosecutions, and what they convicted
The case moved on two tracks. In Haiti, roughly twenty people, including seventeen Colombians, have faced charges, but the domestic proceedings unfolded against a backdrop of deepening state collapse and were repeatedly stalled. As Haiti's own courts faltered, a large part of the case migrated to the United States, where several of the organizers and financiers had operated.
In the Southern District of Florida, the Department of Justice charged eleven defendants. Beginning in 2023, several pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life: among them Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman who admitted helping fund and arm the plot and who, despite cooperating, received a life sentence in June 2023. Then, on 8 May 2026, a Miami jury convicted four more men, including CTU owners Antonio Intriago and Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, financier Walter Veintemilla, and CTU associate James Solages, of conspiring to kill or kidnap the president. Prosecutors said the group had schemed to overthrow Moïse and install a handpicked successor in order to secure lucrative government contracts.
That is the anchor of this file: parallel prosecutions in two countries have established, through guilty pleas and a jury verdict, that a mostly Colombian mercenary team recruited via a Florida firm carried out the killing. It is the finding the site treats as authoritative on the operation.
Two court systems have fixed the team that killed Moïse. Neither has fixed who ultimately ordered it.
The question the trial left hanging
The most important thing about the Miami verdict, for our purposes, is what it did not decide. The jury convicted the organizers and financiers who were before it. It did not identify the ultimate intellectual authors, the people who conceived the plan and put up the money at the top, and the case was widely reported, in Haitian and US press alike, as leaving that question open.
The official story of motive, that the plotters meant to install Christian Sanon, a Florida-based Haitian-American pastor, and reap government contracts, explains part of the picture but strains under scrutiny. Sanon himself is being tried separately for health reasons and has not been convicted, and many observers have doubted that the visible cast, a security-firm owner, a mortgage broker, low-paid ex-soldiers, had the resources or the reach to plan a presidential assassination on their own. That gap is the engine of the case's enduring mystery.
This distinction governs how the file is written. It is honest reporting to say that a mostly Colombian mercenary team killed Moïse and that named organizers were convicted, because the courts found exactly that. It would be a different and unsupported statement to declare who was truly behind it, because no court has done so. Same event, two very different claims, and the gap between them is the whole discipline of the case.
Five years on, the operatives are in prison and the mastermind is still, in law, unnamed.
Where the evidence lands
Keep the layers apart. The operation is documented: Moïse was assassinated on 7 July 2021 by a team of mostly former Colombian soldiers, recruited through the Florida firm CTU, and the killing threw Haiti into a still-deepening crisis. The prosecutions are real: guilty pleas and life sentences in Miami, a jury verdict against four more men in 2026, and charges against roughly twenty people in Haiti. On those points the record is firm.
What the record does not yet support is a name at the top. The same prosecutions that convicted the organizers left the ultimate question, who conceived and financed the killing, unresolved; the stated motive is contested; and Haiti's own indictment was annulled in 2025 for failing to establish the links to high-level figures. The theory that a hidden financier or an insider network truly ordered the assassination is a serious, widely held allegation, but it is an allegation, and no court has converted it into a finding. That is why this file is rated Unproven.
The right posture is to report exactly what the courts have established and to resist filling the rest with certainty. Jovenel Moïse was assassinated; a mostly Colombian mercenary team recruited through a Florida company carried it out, and its organizers have been convicted; and who ordered and paid for it remains, in law, unestablished. Holding those three statements together is not fence-sitting. It is the difference between reporting what two court systems have found and naming a mastermind those courts would not name.
What's still unexplained
- Who ordered and financed the assassination has not been established in law. The prosecutions reached organizers and operatives, but the identity of the ultimate intellectual authors, the people who conceived and paid for the operation, remains formally open, and the Miami trial left that question unresolved.
- The stated motive does not fully add up. The theory that the aim was to install Christian Sanon and win government contracts explains part of the plot, but many observers doubt the visible cast had the resources or reach to plan a presidential killing, suggesting a larger network whose apex is not identified.
- The role of named Haitian officials is disputed. Figures such as Joseph Félix Badio have been cast as organizers, and others have been alleged to sit higher up, but Haiti's Court of Appeal annulled the domestic indictment in 2025 for failing to establish such links, and no settled finding of high-level authorship exists.
- The two prosecutions may never fully converge. With Haiti's investigation reopened amid state collapse and the US case focused on the conspiracy's American footprint, it is uncertain whether any court will ever produce a complete, agreed account of who was behind the killing.
Point by point
The claim: Moïse was killed in a deliberate, organized armed assault, not a spontaneous or lone attack.
What the record shows: This is settled. Multiple investigations and two national court systems treat the 7 July 2021 killing as a planned operation carried out by an armed team that breached the residence, shot the president roughly a dozen times, and wounded the First Lady. No serious account disputes that it was a targeted assassination.
The claim: The operatives were mostly former Colombian soldiers, recruited and organized through a Florida security firm.
What the record shows: Documented. Haitian authorities identified the bulk of the squad as former Colombian Army personnel, and reporting by The Intercept and others traced their recruitment to CTU, a Doral, Florida company, often via WhatsApp on the promise of monthly pay. US prosecutors described the same structure, and the CTU owners were convicted in Miami in 2026.
The claim: Courts have actually adjudicated the case, rather than leaving it to rumor.
What the record shows: Correct, on two tracks. In Haiti, roughly twenty people including seventeen Colombians have faced charges. In the US, the Department of Justice charged eleven defendants; several pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life, and in May 2026 a federal jury convicted four more. That judicial record, not speculation, is what this file treats as authoritative on the operation itself.
The claim: The prosecutions proved who ordered and financed the assassination.
What the record shows: They did not, and this is the central limit. US filings described a scheme to overthrow Moïse and install a successor for lucrative contracts, and named financiers and organizers among the operational plot. But no court has conclusively fixed the identity of the ultimate intellectual authors, and the Miami trial itself, in the words of Haitian and US press, left the who-ordered-it question hanging. Attribution above the operatives remains unproven.
The claim: The plot was simply about installing Christian Sanon as president.
What the record shows: That is one theory the prosecutions advanced, but it is contested and incomplete. Sanon, a Florida-based Haitian-American pastor, was identified as the intended replacement, yet he is being tried separately for health reasons and has not been convicted, and observers have long doubted that a figure with his limited resources and profile could have been the true financier or organizer. The prosecutions themselves point to a broader network whose apex is not established.
The claim: A single named Haitian official was the real mastermind.
What the record shows: Several names have circulated, most prominently Joseph Félix Badio, a former Haitian anti-corruption official whom defense lawyers cast as a key organizer and who was arrested in Haiti in 2023. Others have pointed higher. None of these attributions has been converted into a settled judicial finding of ultimate authorship, and Haiti's Court of Appeal annulled the domestic indictment in 2025 precisely for failing to establish such links. This file reports these as allegations, not facts.
The claim: The killing plunged Haiti into deeper crisis regardless of who ordered it.
What the record shows: Confirmed, and not seriously contested. Moïse's assassination left Haiti without a sitting president or a functioning constitutional line of succession, accelerating the collapse of state authority, the surge of armed gangs, and years of political paralysis. That consequence is independent of the unresolved question of ultimate responsibility.
Other readings
Angles that don't fit neatly into the claim or its rebuttal, laid out and weighed, not endorsed.
The hidden-financier reading
The most common interpretation among Haitians and many analysts holds that the visible plotters were instruments of wealthier, better-connected backers who wanted Moïse gone, whether over contracts, political rivalry, or his moves against entrenched interests. This is a serious and widely voiced allegation, and the small scale of the convicted operatives lends it intuitive force. But it is precisely the layer the courts have not established: no financier above the charged network has been fixed in a judicial finding, and this file reports the theory as an open allegation rather than a proven fact.
The insider-facilitation reading
A related angle stresses how easily the team reached the president: a lightly guarded residence, gaps in the security detail, and a DEA ruse that met little resistance have fueled the view that people inside Haiti's own security apparatus or government facilitated the hit. Elements of this are supported by investigative reporting and arrests of Haitian officials and officers. Yet how far up any such complicity ran, and whether it amounted to sanctioning the killing rather than failing to stop it, is not resolved, and the annulled indictment reflects how contested these links remain.
Timeline
- 2021-05According to later US filings, organizers begin assembling the operation, recruiting former Colombian Army soldiers through the Miami-area firm CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) and lining up financing. The stated cover story shifts over time from providing security to serving an arrest warrant to, ultimately, an armed assault.
- 2021-07-07Shortly after 1 a.m., an armed team storms Moïse's residence in Pèlerin 5, above Pétion-Ville, with members shouting in English that this is a DEA operation. Moïse is shot roughly a dozen times and killed; First Lady Martine Moïse is gravely wounded and later airlifted to Florida for treatment.
- 2021-07-08Haitian authorities announce that the president was killed by a foreign hit squad. Over the following days security forces kill three of the attackers and detain most of the others, identifying the bulk of them as former Colombian soldiers, along with two Haitian-American men.
- 2021-07-16The Intercept and other outlets report that at least seven of the Colombian suspects had received US military training, and that the men were recruited via WhatsApp on the promise of roughly $3,000 a month, some believing they were hired to protect Haitian officials rather than to kill the president.
- 2021-07Investigators identify Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Florida-based Haitian-American doctor and pastor, as the figure the plotters allegedly intended to install in Moïse's place. Sanon is detained in Haiti; the true chain of command above the operatives is already disputed.
- 2023-01The US Department of Justice brings charges in the Southern District of Florida. A grand jury eventually returns an indictment against eleven defendants, moving a substantial part of the case into a US courtroom as Haiti's own proceedings stall amid political collapse.
- 2023-06-02Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman who admitted helping fund and arm the plot, becomes the first defendant sentenced in the US case; a Miami judge imposes a life sentence despite his cooperation. Further guilty pleas and life sentences follow for other co-conspirators.
- 2025-10-14Haiti's Court of Appeal annuls the earlier indictment in the domestic case, citing procedural flaws and insufficient evidence linking high-profile figures to the plot, and orders the investigation reopened with instructions to identify the intellectual authors beyond the arrested mercenaries.
- 2026-05-08A federal jury in Miami convicts four defendants, including CTU owners Antonio Intriago and Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, financier Walter Veintemilla, and CTU associate James Solages, of conspiracy to kill or kidnap Moïse. Prosecutors said the aim was to topple him and win lucrative government contracts; the ultimate mastermind is not named.
Unresolved. The core event is documented beyond dispute: in the early hours of 7 July 2021, an armed team stormed President Jovenel Moïse's private residence above Port-au-Prince and shot him dead, wounding First Lady Martine Moïse. That the operation was carried out by a squad of roughly two dozen men, most of them former Colombian soldiers, alongside a small number of Haitian-Americans, is established by parallel prosecutions in Haiti and in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In Miami, several co-conspirators pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life, and in May 2026 a federal jury convicted four more, including the owners of the Doral-based security firm CTU that recruited the Colombians. What remains unresolved, and what keeps this file rated unproven, is the layer above the operatives: who ultimately ordered the killing, who financed it, and what the true objective was. Prosecutors described a plot to overthrow Moïse and install a handpicked successor for lucrative contracts, but no court has fixed the identity of the intellectual authors, and Haiti's own indictment was annulled in 2025 and the investigation reopened. This file reports the documented team and the convictions as fact, and treats the mastermind question as open.
Reviewed by The Conspiratory Editors · Last reviewed July 19, 2026 · How we rate
Sources
- 1.Four Defendants Convicted in Plot to Kill Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (2026)
- 2.Four Florida Men Arrested in Plot to Kill Haitian President, Grand Jury Returns Indictment Against 11, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (2023)
- 3.Colombian Mercenaries and the Assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, The Intercept (2021)
- 4.At Least Seven Colombians in Haiti Assassination Received U.S. Training, The Intercept (2021)
- 5.Four convicted in US related to killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, Al Jazeera (2026)
- 6.Who ordered Jovenel Moïse killed? Assassination trial leaves question hanging, The Haitian Times (2026)
- 7.Miami Judge Orders Life Sentence For First Defendant Involved In Haitian President's Assassination, Forbes (2023)
- 8.Haitian-Chilean Citizen Sentenced to Federal Prison in Connection with Plot to Kill Haitian President, U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of Florida (2023)
- 9.The assassination of Haiti's president exposes role of ex-Colombian soldiers, NBC News (2021)
- 10.Assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Wikipedia
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