[Source: Reuters]

The prominent Donald Trump supporter and private security executive Erik Prince says he has a 10-year deal with Haiti to fight the country’s criminal gangs, and then take a role in restoring the country’s tax-collection system.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince said his company, Vectus Global, would be involved in designing and implementing a program to tax goods imported across Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic once the security situation is stabilized.

He said he expected to wrestle control of major roads and territories from the gangs in about a year.

“One key measure of success for me will be when you can drive from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitian in a thin-skinned vehicle and not be stopped by gangs,” Prince said in the interview.

Prince would not comment about how much the Haitian government would pay Vectus Global, nor how much tax he expects to collect in Haiti.

The new president of the transitional council, Laurent Saint-Cyr, who was inaugurated on August 7 as part of a planned rotation of council leaders, did not respond to requests for comment.

Haiti’s former council president and prime minister also did not respond to requests for comment.

Vectus began operating in Haiti in March, deploying mainly drones in coordination with a task force led by the prime minister, but the long-term engagement and the involvement in tax collection have not been previously reported.

A person familiar with the company’s operations in Haiti told Reuters that Vectus would intensify its fight against the criminal gangs that control large swathes of Haiti in the coming weeks in coordination with the Haitian police, deploying several hundred fighters from the United States, Europe and El Salvador who are trained as snipers and specialists in intelligence and communications, as well as helicopters and boats. Vectus’s force includes some French and Creole speakers, the person said.

Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, founded the Blackwater military security firm in 1997. He sold the company in 2010 after Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.

The men were pardoned by Trump during his first term in the White House.

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