Educating the world about the Dominican Republic

Read here why you should stop sugar purchases from the Dominican Republic

About The Suger Barons - From Wikipedia:

The Fanjul brothers -- Alfonso "Alfy", José "Pepe", Alexander, and Andres—are owners of Flo-Sun, Inc., a vast sugar and real estate conglomerate in the United States and Dominican Republic, comprising the subsidiaries Domino Sugar, Florida Crystals, as well as the airport and resorts surrounding La Romana in the Dominican Republic. As of 2008, the company owned 450,000 acres (1,800 km²) of property.

FanjulCorp's Flo-Sun company is frequently criticized as being the largest recipient of U.S. Government aid and heightened profit due to the protections levied in favor of U.S. sugar producers. It is widely known that sugar costs about two-three times as much in the U.S. as it does on the world market.

FanjulCorp benefits significantly (their net profits average an additional $50 million to $100 million per year due solely to the quota and break-even program). The Fanjul brothers were large shareholders and directors of Southeast Bank before its takeover and liquidation by the FDIC in 1991. In addition, they are the majority shareholders and directors of FAIC Securities, which was investigated by the S.E.C. for regulatory violations.

Their estimates fortune is over USD 500 Million according to the book “Tricks of an IRS Cheat and other scandals you should know about Uncle Sam” page 82, http://tinyurl.com/35kfy4r , other magazines refer to them as Billionaires(see article below).

About Casa de Campo

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Casa de Campo is a 7,000 acre (about 5 square miles!!) large private luxury residential resort near La Romana on the south east side of the Dominican Republic. Casa de Campo is like a country with in the country. They have their own security force (not local police), hospital, schools, cinema plus a mega marina with lots of shops, restaurants and a supermarket. This 2000 luxury villa area has restricted access to residents, tourists and high society people only. That means 90% of general darker complexion of the Dominican population cannot visit Casa de Campo and are denied access to the beaches and restaurants. (That policy probably fits well with the statements and life of Fanjuls private secretary for 35 years, Chloe Black, read article below). Just ask the Dominican working class living in area of La Romana if they can visit Casa de Campo? The answer is no, and they will not even try!

Casa de Campo is a play ground for the rich(mostly white), the corrupt and the drug lords. In the last couple of years several drug lords connected to Dominican Republic has spend time or had properties in Casa de Campo.

This world famous luxury villa resort also host the ex Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was picked up by Leonel Fernandez’s private jet and now lives in exile in Casa de Campo despite the new government want him back to face charges of fraud in his home country.

The huge Casa de Campo resort is located on a very little fraction of the Fanjuls land, the family owns 240,000 acres in that area. The name of the family residence in Casa de Campo is Casa Grande President Bush has visited Casa de Campo at several occasions.

Watch this documentary video narrated by Paul Newman about the slavery conditions of the Haitian sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic!

Story in TIME magazine and CNN explaining the Fanjul Casa de Campo sugar business:

Sweet deal why are these men smiling? The reason is in your sugar bowl

By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

TIME magazine Occupying a breathtaking spot on the southeast coast of the Dominican Republic, Casa de Campo is one of the Caribbean's most storied resorts. It bills itself as "a hedonist's and sportsman's dream," and that's truth in advertising. The place has 14 swimming pools, a world-class shooting ground, PGA-quality golf courses and $1,000-a-night villas.

A thousand miles to the northwest, in the Florida Everglades, the vista is much different. Chemical runoff from the corporate cultivation of sugar cane imperils vegetation and wildlife. Polluted water spills out of the glades into Florida Bay, forming a slimy, greenish brown stain where fishing once thrived.

Both sites are the by-product of corporate welfare.

In this case the beneficiaries are the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, Fla. The name means nothing to most Americans, but the Fanjuls might be considered the First Family of Corporate Welfare. They own Flo-Sun Inc., one of the nation's largest producers of raw sugar. As such, they benefit from federal policies that compel American consumers to pay artificially high prices for sugar.

Since the Fanjuls control about one-third of Florida's sugar-cane production, that means they collect at least $60 million a year in subsidies, according to an analysis of General Accounting Office calculations. It's the sweetest of deals, and it's made the family, the proprietors of Casa de Campo, one of America's richest.

The subsidy has had one other consequence: it has helped create an environmental catastrophe in the Everglades. Depending on whom you talk to, it will cost anywhere from $3 billion to $8 billion to repair the Everglades by building new dikes, rerouting canals and digging new lakes.

Growers are committed to pay up to $240 million over 20 years for the cleanup. Which means the industry that created much of the problem will have to pay only a fraction of the cost to correct it. Government will pay the rest. As for the Fanjuls, a spokesman says they are committed to pay about $4.5 million a year.

How did this disaster happen? With your tax dollars. How will it be fixed? With your tax dollars.

It is not news that sugar is richly subsidized, or that the Fanjuls have profited so handsomely. Even as recently as 1995, when Congress passed legislation to phase out price supports for a cornucopia of agricultural products, raw sugar was spared. Through a combination of loan guarantees and tariffs on imported sugar, domestic farmers like the Fanjuls are shielded from real-world prices. So in the U.S., raw sugar sells for about $22 a pound, more than double the price most of the world pays. The cost to Americans: at least $1.4 billion in the form of higher prices for candy, soda and other sweet things of life. A GAO study, moreover, has estimated that nearly half the subsidy goes to large sugar producers like the Fanjuls.

A spokesman for Flo-Sun, Jorge Dominicis, said the company disagrees with the GAO's estimate on the profits the Fanjuls and other growers derive from the program.

"That is supposed to imply somehow that our companies receive $60 million in guaranteed profits," he said, "and that is flat-out not true. Our companies don't make anywhere near that kind of profit."

Dominicis, like other proponents of the sugar program, contends that it doesn't cost taxpayers a penny and is not unlike government protection of other American industries. "If our [sugar policy] is corporate welfare, which I don't believe it is, then all trade policy is corporate welfare," he says.

Flo-Sun is run by four Fanjul brothers, Alfonso ("Alfie"), Jose ("Pepe"), Andres and Alexander. Their family dominated Cuba's sugar industry for decades, and they came to this country with their parents in 1959, after Fidel Castro seized power. The Fanjuls arrived just as a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to control the flow of water in the Florida Everglades made large-scale development possible. The total acreage planted in sugar cane there soared--from 50,000 acres in 1960 to more than 420,000 today.

Within that swampy paradise lies yet another subsidy. Each year, according to a 1997 estimate, the Army Corps of Engineers spends $63 million to control water flow in central and south Florida. This enables growers to obtain water when they need it or restrain the flow during heavy rains. Of the $63 million, the Corps estimates $52 million is spent on agriculture, mainly sugar-cane farmers, in the Everglades.

Even with the additional production from the Glades, propped up by price supports, the U.S. can't produce all the sugar it needs. The Federal Government rations access to the lucrative U.S. market by assigning quotas to 40 sugar-producing nations, most of them developing countries. And, remarkably, the Fanjuls have found riches here too. Every year, the country that receives the largest sugar quota is the Dominican Republic. With a per-capita income of $1,600 a year and an unemployment rate hovering around 20%, that Caribbean nation needs all the economic help it can get. And who is the largest private exporter of Dominican sugar? The Fanjuls, thanks in part to their long-standing relationship with the Dominican Republic's politicians. Through a subsidiary, Central Romana Ltd., the brothers grow sugar cane and operate the world's largest sugar mill there. The profit margin is substantial, partly because cane cutters on the island earn about $100 a month, making production costs much lower than in Florida. From their Dominican plantation the Fanjuls export roughly 100,000 tons of raw, duty-free sugar each year to the U.S.

Whether they sell sugar from their holdings in the Everglades or from their mill in the Caribbean, the Fanjuls are guaranteed a U.S. price that is more than double anywhere else in the world. As might be expected, having it both ways has propelled the Fanjuls into the ranks of the richest Americans. Their wealth is counted in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And although they appear frequently in the society pages, the Fanjuls won't be caught dead in the financial section. As Emilia Fanjul, the wife of Pepe, once confided to a society reporter, "We like to be private about the business."

Depending on the season, the Fanjuls can be found shooting game in Scotland, skiing in Switzerland or relaxing at their spectacular Casa de Campo. These 7,000 acres overlooking the sea have long been a favorite playground of the wealthy. But Palm Beach is still their real home, and Florida is still the heart of their financial empire. They now farm an estimated 180,000 acres of cane-producing land in the Everglades--43% of the total--making them one of the two-largest sugar growers in the state.

For decades, this region has been home to one of the worst jobs in America--hacking cane with a machete. Until the work was mechanized in the 1990s, the growers had to bring in thousands of cane cutters from the Caribbean every season. Yet in preserving the subsidy that has made millionaires of the Fanjuls, Congress has cited the fact that it saves American jobs.

Migrant-labor organizations and legal-aid groups in Florida have long waged an ongoing battle with the Fanjuls and other growers over the abysmal conditions. Greg Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworkers Justice Project in Belle Glade, Fla., contends that of all the growers, the Fanjuls have treated their workers the worst. "They are in a class by themselves," he said. A lawsuit seeking back wages and benefits is expected to go to trial next spring.

Every few years, critics of the sugar program attempt to roll back the subsidy that has enriched the Fanjuls and kept sugar prices high. And every time they fail, largely because of the power of the sugar lobby, which includes not just large growers like the Fanjuls but thousands of small sugar-beet farmers in other parts of the nation.

Though by no means the largest special interest in Washington, the sugar lobby is one of the most well-heeled. And among growers, the Fanjuls are big givers. Family members and corporate executives have contributed nearly $1 million so far in this decade, dividing the money fairly evenly between political parties.

This knack for covering all political bases carries all the way to the top of the Fanjul empire. Alfonso Fanjul served as co-chairman of Bill Clinton's Florida campaign in 1992. His brother Pepe was national vice chairman of finance for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996 and was host to a $1,000-a-head fund raiser for Dole at his Palm Beach mansion. After Clinton's 1992 victory, Alfie was a member of the select group invited by the Clinton camp to attend the President-elect's "economic summit" in Little Rock, Ark.

Careful readers of Kenneth Starr's impeachment report to Congress will note that on Feb. 19, 1996, Alfie called President Clinton while the President was closeted with Monica Lewinsky in an emotional meeting in the Oval Office. After breaking the news that "their intimate relationship" would have to end--temporarily, as it turned out--the President returned Fanjul's call; Lewinsky left. The two spoke for 22 minutes. The topic: a proposed tax on sugar farmers to pay for the Everglades cleanup. Fanjul reportedly told the President he and other growers opposed such a step, since it would cost them millions. Such a tax has never been passed.

That's access. Source: CNN.com

Watch this documentary video narrated by Paul Newman about the slavery conditions of the Haitian sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic!

Related scandals or stories about the Fanjuls:

Billionaire won't fire assistant for KKK link

Billionaire sugar baron Pepe Fanjul is refusing to fire his executive assistant, Chloe Black, despite her being married first to a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and then to the founder of a white-supremacist group.

Chloe, who has worked for the Cuban-born owner of Florida Crystals for more than 35 years, is the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke, and the current wife of Don Black, a former KKK grand wizard and member of the American Nazi Party…… Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/linked_to_kkk_keeps_her_job_PfFEwT29YLqtToLV5MIgiI#ixzz17RCMr2fR

High profile spokesperson for Fanjuls business involved in Ponzi scheme

Former State Rep. Gaston Cantens, the high-profile spokesman for the Fanjul family’s West Palm Beach-based sugar empire, has agreed to pay $340,000 to creditors of his parents’ bankrupt company, which the Securities and Exchange Commission says ran a Ponzi scheme. One of the reader comments: These Cubans are richer than the Donald trump. their wealth amounts to billions. we need an investigation as to the source of all their money now. and we need a criminal investigation go get the Fanjuls. and please go back to havana. Read full article here: http://www.page2live.com/2010/04/27/florida-crystals-big-gaston-cantens-clawed-back/

Government provides a sweet deal for the Fanjul family

Several major American food companies have written to Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack, saying they may run out of sugar if import restrictions aren’t eased.

Manufacturers are limited in the amount of tariff-free sugar they can import. As a result, domestic sugar prices are double world levels, which have soared as consumer demand outstrips supply. One of the largest beneficiaries over the years has been the Fanjul family in southern Florida.

The Fanjuls own Florida Crystals Corporation, a privately held company that last year saw revenues of $3 billion, according to The New York Times.

Click on the headline for the article to read the full article and see the map of relations of persons and companies!!!

Fanjul dogs died of heat stroke, was left inside their car!

A necropsy has determined that two dogs left in a hot Range Rover outside the home of a prominent Palm Beach family died of heat stroke, Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control officials said Monday.

Pepe Fanjul Jr. and Lourdes Fanjul will be cited with two counts of leaving an animal in an unoccupied vehicle, a civil infraction, which each carries a $100 fine.

Do they care about anything but money? Read the full article http://tinyurl.com/3y6h4gs

The Dominican Government and many local websites try to portray the Dominican Republic as a dream destination for holiday makers and investors, when in reality there are no consumer laws protecting them. Moreover too many tourists are getting killed and the entire country is full of corruption, fraud and drugs. Other serious problems are related to travel illnesses.

– Read more than 500 articles form Dominican Watchdog – The Uncensored Knowledge Center about the DR