Mystery Solved: Luperon's Diesel-Leaking Fishing Fleet Was Protected by Drug Cartel

Meanwhile, the Fifth Commercial Boat in 16 Months Goes Up in Flames

The Miss Belkist continues to smoulder after catching fire around 2 a.m. on Saturday. Four crew were badly burned, including two undocumented Haitians. A Dominican newspaper reported that the fire happened while repairs were being made, even though such repairs were unlawful but apparently permited by local port authorities and the Ministry of the Environment.

Another commercial vessel burned recently in Luperon Bay, the troubled cruiser anchorage on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. It was fifth destroyed by fire since May 2023. And when the boats of the decrepit commercial fleet weren’t burning they were spilling so much diesel into this designated wildlife refuge that cruisers on moorings would be shocked awake in the middle of the night from the smell.

Yet there is good news. Finally, there may be an end in sight to the travesty that Luperon Bay has become. The last Loose Cannon story on the popular hurricane hole posited that this mystery; Why had Dominican authorities had allowed the fleet to continue its polluting ways for so long?

D.R.'s National 'Shame' Continues in Diesel-Soaked Luperon Bay

That mystery may well be solved. People here were just plain too scared to do anything.

Government authorities were afraid of a guy named Isodoro Rotestan Clase, who was a business partner of Rafael Ynoa Santana, who was a business partner of a Columbian named Juan Carlos López Macías.

Loose Cannon has learned that five of the fishing vessels in the harbor belonged to Clase, aka “El Men.” The guys whom Clase worked with also had gangland nicknames. Santana was “El Cojo,” “Pocho” and “El Don.” Macias was “El Sobrino.”

According to Dominican police, “The Nephew” would provide tons of Columbian cocaine to Clase and Santana, who would smuggle it into the Dominican Republic by fishing vessels and go-fast boats, to be sent on to Europe and the United States. They had been doing this since 2019.

Miss Belkist burned through the night.

The men also engaged in money laundering, extortion and contract killing, police said.

Sources said that Clase’s fishing boats would tie up to the government dock at Luperon Bay, where the cocaine would be taken off in the middle of the night and loaded onto trucks that had been driven out to the end of 1,300-foot pier.

This was accomplished under the very noses of the Dominican Navy, whose command post is just 300 feet from the entrance to the pier. Sometimes, the Dominican patrol boat Hamal would be docked among the fishing boats.

The smugglers managed to transport cocaine off the government pier within a few hundred feet of a Dominican Navy post.

Some of the vessels returning to Luperon had traveled around Hispaniola and gone west to fish off Honduras or elsewhere in the southwestern Caribbean Sea—hundreds of miles from local fishing grounds.

Early Morning Raids

The two alleged kingpins were arrested on September 18 in an early morning raid across five Dominican provinces, including the nearby city of Puerto Plata, where Clase was hauled out of bed by national drug police assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

More than 400 officers conducted 37 simultaneous raids, arresting Santana, Clase and eight other major players. More remarkable than the black-clad commando cops rapeling down from helicopters was the fact that the authorities had managed to keep “Operation Buffalo NK” a secret from their targets.

Now that at least five of Luperon’s fishing fleet have been seized—all Clase’s boats—the question is when will the government get them out of the bay and where will they go. The fleet had been evicted from Puerto Plata in 2023 to ensure a better view for the tourists looking down from the enormous cruise ships that began arriving then. They probably can’t go back there.

‘Giant F South’

News stories about the raids always included credit to the U.S. Southern Command, which might seem curious since this is a military headquarters, not law enforcement…except that it kinda is.

Southern Command includes an organization called Joint Interagency Task Force South or JIATF-S, referred to in conversation as “Giant F South.” Founded in 1989 and located at the Key West Naval Air Station, Giant F is under the wing of the Defense Department, but incorporates personnel from all the “Alphabet” intelligence agencies, federal law enforcement and representatives from 20 nations in the hemisphere.

Giant F exists for the detection and monitoring of drug smuggling at sea, and now presumably human trafficking as well. It has a seized drug submersible mounted in front of its building as a trophy.

Dominican police are briefed before conducting a series of raids on September 18.