HAITI/COMBAT POUR un futur incertain. The New Yorker ( en anglais )

Publié par siel sur 13 Octobre 2019, 16:27pm

Catégories : #AYITI ACTUALITES, #AYITI ROSE RAKET, #AYITI EXTREME DROITE, #AYITI ECONOMIE, #PEUPLE sans mémoire..., #DUVALIER

EXTRAITS :

It’s been thirty-two months since Moïse was sworn into office after a contested, fraud-plagued, two-round election cycle in which only eighteen per cent of eligible voters participated. In a country of more than ten million people, about six hundred thousand voted for him. Even before taking his Presidential oath, Moïse was accused by Haiti’s Central Financial Intelligence Unit (ucref) of having laundered millions of dollars. A few months into his term, he fired the director of ucref—a move that probably led to Moïse being cleared of the laundering charges, which he has denied.

Unknown to most Haitians until he was handpicked by his predecessor, Michel Martelly—who also came to power through elections mired in fraud—Moïse was presented as a successful rural businessman from outside Haiti’s political class, a banana exporter nicknamed Nèg Bannann, or Banana Man. Less advertised was that he was also an auto-parts dealer and a supposed road-construction magnate. According to two reports published earlier this year by Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, in 2014, before he’d officially become a Presidential candidate, Moïse received more than a million dollars from Martelly’s government, funds that were allocated for road construction and repair in the northern region of the country. The government auditors report that Moïse was paid twice for the same contract, once as the head of Agritrans and again as the leader of another firm, called Betexs. The two firms were listed as having the same staff and projects, as well as the same government patent and tax-identification number. The road for which the money was doubly paid shows no sign of having been constructed or repaired. Moïse also got more than a hundred thousand dollars for another one of his companies, Comphener S.A., to install solar panels on street lamps.

The funds allegedly pilfered in these schemes came from Venezuela’s Petrocaribe oil program, which Haiti joined in 2006. Through the Petrocaribe agreement, the Haitian government bought oil from Venezuela, paid sixty per cent of the purchase price within ninety days, then deferred the rest of the debt, at a one-per-cent interest rate, over twenty-five years. The Haitian government controlled the sale of the oil and was supposed to use those funds for development projects, including infrastructure, agriculture, education, sanitation, and health. This debt to Venezuela has grown to almost two billion dollars over the past decade.

L'article complet dans le lien.

Demonstrators in Haiti Are Fighting for an Uncertain Future

Edwidge Danticat writes about the protests across Haiti demanding an end to corruption in the administration of President Jovenel Moïse and the creation of a more egalitarian, inclusive, and just ...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/demonstrators-in-haiti-are-fighting-for-an-uncertain-future