Politics
Haiti: Prime Minister Lamothe sues US newspaper for defamation
Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. PHOTO/File
Haiti’s prime minister has sued a Haitian-American weekly newspaper for defamation over its reporting on the sale of a telecommunications company acquired by the government of Haiti.
In the lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and South Florida businessman Patrice Baker said Haiti-Observateur’s reporting on the sale of Haitel was “outrageous, scandalous and reminiscent of a tabloid publication.”
The Haitian telecom – Haitel, shut down earlier this year because it couldn’t pay its debts. It was then acquired by the government of Haiti.
A message left Wednesday for Leo Joseph, a Haiti-Observateur reporter named in the lawsuit along with the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based newspaper, was not immediately returned.
In an article written in French for Haiti-Observateur’s September 12 edition, Joseph said Lamothe has not answered questions about the sale, though the prime minister has “cried ‘defamation’ accusing Leo Joseph and the weekly of spreading lies against him.”
The newspaper has been publishing since 1971 and serves Haiti’s large diaspora communities in New York, Florida, Montreal and the Caribbean. On its website, the paper says it has a weekly circulation of 75,000.
According to the lawsuit, most of the paper’s online readership comes from Florida, which is home to the largest Haitian-American population in the U.S.
