(07.02.2023)

In the early 1990s, the U.S. government sanctioned Bigio, his wife, son and others for their support of a military coup that ousted Haiti’s first democratically elected president. Years later, a member of a Haitian militia ‒ or private army ‒ accused Bigio and another businessman of paying for the 1993 assassination of a prominent democracy activist, according to Jeb Sprauge, author and University of California Riverside research associate. Authorities in Haiti did not charge Bigio with or accuse him of wrongdoing.