Saturday, 21 October 2023 07:07

Federal Agents Investigating Sugar Exporter Over Allegations of Forced Labor in Its Supply Chain

Residents of a Batey. Credit: Pedro Farias-Nardi

If an inquiry by Homeland Security Investigations leads to criminal charges against Central Romana Corp. or company executives, it would be “unprecedented,” one former agent says.

The Americans pulling into the luxury Caribbean resort town of Juan Dolio could have easily passed as tourists. Dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, they set up at a hotel overlooking the Dominican Republic’s southern coast. But the group, which included law enforcement officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, wasn’t traveling to enjoy the area’s world-class golf courses and palm-studded white sand beaches.

Trained to target and dismantle terrorist groups and transnational drug cartels, the special agents from Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, were probing something very different: working conditions at the Central Romana Corp., a major exporter of sugar to the U.S., whose top executive is Alfonso Fanjul, a billionaire Florida businessman.

The agents spent days last March secretly interviewing Haitian cane cutters, who were shuttled to the hotel from Central Romana’s sprawling nearby 240,000-acre plantation, where many workers, along with their families, live in ramshackle camps known as bateyes.

In November, months before the HSI agents’ arrival, U.S. Customs and Border Protection blocked imports of Central Romana sugar—which averaged about a quarter-billion pounds a year—after finding evidence of forced labor among its Haitian cane cutters.

But the HSI agents’ inquiry and deployment in the Dominican Republic, disclosed here for the first time, indicates significant new federal scrutiny of the country’s sugar industry. It could also represent a breakthrough in the application of U.S. laws allowing corporations and their executives to be held criminally accountable for labor exploitation in their supply chains.

A series of lawsuits and reports by government agencies, civil society groups, and academics—along with extensive media investigations—have exposed grim conditions that Central Romana cane cutters and their families face, including substandard company housing, often without electricity or running water. In dozens of interviews with Reveal and Mother Jones over the last four years, workers and their advocates have described inadequate protective gear, poor medical care, low pay, chronic debt, and intimidation by the company’s armed security force.

Alfonso Fanjul and his brother Jose “Pepe” Fanjul hold top positions at Central Romana. Their business empire includes the Dominican luxury resort Casa de Campo; major sugar brands such as Domino, C&H, and Florida Crystals; nearly 190,000 acres of Everglades-area cane fields; and the world’s largest network of sugar refineries.

An investigation by HSI that leads to criminal charges against Central Romana or the company’s leadership would be “unprecedented,” according to Kenneth Kennedy, a retired special agent with the division who directed efforts to expand its work targeting forced labor in goods imported into the U.S. “This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains.”

Central Romana spokesman Jorge Sturla declined to confirm the existence of, or comment on, any investigation by HSI. Sturla said Elevate, a labor auditor Central Romana has arranged to consult for the company, had “found no evidence of forced labor.” He declined to provide a copy of its report.

A Central Romana batey. Credit: Pedro Farias-Nardi

A department spokesperson said HSI does not confirm the existence of or comment on ongoing investigations. However, four Central Romana cane field workers confirmed they met with HSI agents earlier this year. The workers, who requested anonymity fearing reprisal by their employer, told Reveal and Mother Jones that agents queried them in Spanish and Haitian Creole about their grueling work, living conditions, pay, debt, medical care, and precarious immigration status. (The vast majority of the company’s cane workers are of Haitian descent, and many are undocumented.) The agents also asked about elderly workers who, lacking access to government pensions, routinely cut cane into their 70s.

“The people from the United States government were interested in improving the situation for the Central Romana workers,” said one man who was interviewed by HSI, who reported having spent 30 years working in the cane fields.


The Homeland Security Investigations inquiry is taking place as Central Romana flexes its muscle in Washington over the export ban. Congressional disclosure reports show Central Romana has paid Akin Gump, which Sturla confirmed was hired for its “experience in international trade law,” to lobby members of the House about the ban. Another payment of $25,000 for lobbying the State Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection went to the firm of James “Wally” Brewster, a U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic under the Obama administration.

In August, Alfonso Fanjul, the Palm Beach-based president and CEO of Central Romana, sent a letter to former U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), a longtime ally of President Joe Biden who now serves as a State Department special presidential adviser for the Americas. In the letter, obtained by Reveal and Mother Jones, Fanjul said he was “terribly upset” by the forced labor allegations and asked for Dodd’s help in “requesting (Customs and Border Protection) to lift its sanctions on our company.”

“Chris, we have been friends for a long time,” wrote Fanjul, who has contributed millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns, including Dodd’s. “I am a man of honor. … I would never allow my company to treat our workers in ways that would deserve the treatment we have received from CBP.”

Fanjul’s letter, which refers to Dodd’s previous “help and advice” on the Customs and Border Protection ban, comes from a powerful executive whose millions of dollars in campaign donations and lobbying has helped preserve lucrative price supports for U.S. sugar producers.

Sturla, the Central Romana spokesperson, said Fanjul had sent the letter to combat “disinformation” about the company. Dodd’s office and a State Department spokesperson both declined to comment on the letter, as did a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson.

The letter “gives a rare glimpse into the smoky backroom,” said Andrew Sullivan, a political strategist for No Big Sugar, a coalition of labor, human rights, and environmental groups lobbying Congress to end the price supports. “He says the quiet part out loud, asking his ‘friend’ Senator Chris Dodd to trust him, not Customs and Border Protection. Fanjul is a man used to getting what he wants, and his frustration is palpable.” In light of the longstanding friendship Fanjul cites in his letter, Sullivan called on Dodd to recuse himself from any efforts to lift the ban.


FROM THE ARCHIVE

The Bitter Work Behind Sugar

The Bitter Work Behind Sugar

On a vast plantation in the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrants still use machetes to harvest sugarcane that’s exported to the U.S. The workers are protesting poor working and living conditions.

Listen to our podcast

Fanjul’s letter strongly denied that Central Romana uses forced labor, and also cited Elevate’s report, claiming it came to the same conclusion. However, he wrote that the labor auditor recommended steps to improve its handling of “employee complaints,” their “interactions with supervisors,” and “the quality of our worker housing.” Sturla says Central Romana has invested millions of dollars to improve worker housing, but experts on forced labor say those parts of the letter are unintended acknowledgements of some of the issues at the heart of the import ban.

“This letter confirms what other people have been saying,” said Duncan Jepson, managing director of Liberty Shared, an anti-trafficking group. “There are problems in how they handle complaints by workers, governance over supervisors’ conduct, housing and infrastructure.”

Jepson’s organization has partnered with U.S. agencies, including HSI, to combat forced labor throughout global supply chains—and has provided the government with relevant evidence on Ireland’s fishing industry, an Asian palm oil company, Goodyear’s factory in Malaysia, and Central Romana’s operations. Most recently, the group filed a petition with U.S. Customs and Border Protection regarding Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.’s rubber plantation in Liberia. “These are very old industries,” Jepson said, “so their production methods still are very much entwined with the long history of abusive and exploitative labor practices.”

“This seems an opportunity for Mr. Fanjul to lead a program of transformative change at Central Romana,” he added.

But according to Charity Ryerson, executive director of the Corporate Accountability Lab, a labor watchdog group, instead of making the changes necessary to lift the ban, the company has so far focused on fighting it: “Central Romana has wasted the 10 months since the Customs ban was issued pursuing a political escape route rather than doing the right thing: remediating the abusive labor conditions identified by CBP and others.”


Federal laws authorize HSI to conduct and coordinate criminal investigations into U.S.-bound supply chains that could involve forced labor. Businesses or individuals who knowingly benefit financially from forced labor can face criminal penalties, including up to 20 years in prison.

As part of his work at HSI, Kennedy helped initiate the agency’s criminal investigation into Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. over alleged labor abuses at its factory in Malaysia. The investigation, which included interviews with overseas workers, was the first of its kind, said Kennedy, who retired from government in 2020. The inquiry was closed without criminal charges after Goodyear reached a settlement with workers last year.

Kennedy said investigators would easily be able to trace Central Romana’s supply chain of raw sugar from its Dominican plantation to U.S. ports. But prosecutors could face significant obstacles to bringing any potential or possible criminal charges, he said, including a lack of legal precedents or political will by agency officials and lawmakers and difficulties in getting victims to agree to testify. “These are some uncharted waters,” he said.

Central Romana has long denied the use of forced labor on its Dominican plantations. In a statement issued in the wake of the 2022 U.S. customs ban, the company insisted it ensured “safe and productive employment” with “appropriate wages, housing and other benefits.” Yet the same statement also pledged to “engage in a dialogue” with Customs and Border Protection. Since then, the company tasked Elevate, which specializes in global supply chain issues, with examining concerns raised by the agency. Central Romana has announced salary increases, applied fresh paint to some bateyes and, as part of what Sturla described as a “multi-year” improvement plan, installed solar panels in some bateyes and demolished others, relocating occupants to “upgraded housing.” But ex-residents of one dismantled community, now living in isolated bateyes with no power, have bitterly denounced the company’s actions. Their former community had been located on a highway and was one of the estimated 10% of the company’s work camps with electricity. According to complaints by residents of two other bateyes, the solar installations are adequate only for charging a cellphone or lighting a single bulb.

While Sturla also cited investments in health care and education for workers and their families, former U.S. officials and sources from nongovernmental organizations said Central Romana has appeared resistant to implementing more expansive reforms that could lead to a lifting of the trade ban.

“Labor rights advocates offered to collaborate with the company to develop an innovative, long-term solution for these workers,” said Ryerson. “Central Romana squandered that opportunity by not engaging in good faith,” declining to “do the right thing and remediate the harmful labor conditions” identified by Customs and Border Protection.

This story was developed in partnership with Mother Jones and with support from the Pulitzer Center. It was edited by Clint Hendler and Kate Howard and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

Sandy Tolan can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and Michael Montgomery can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow them on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Sandy_Tolan and @mdmontgomery.

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Close window X

Republish this article

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Republish Our Content

Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:

PRINT

  • Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)

  • Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.

  • If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”

  • Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.

PHOTOS

  • You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.

  • If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.

DATA

  • If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact deputy editor Kate Howard at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

IN GENERAL

  • We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.

  • You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

  • If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

  • If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.

  • Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.

If you have any other questions, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

1