Last Updated on August 17, 2020, 9:46 PM AST by Anthony Morris
High Court of Auditors of Haiti released a report on Monday which slammed the fraudulent and illegal management by various administrations and ministers of around $2 billion received in the form aid from Venezuela between 2008 and 2016.
The report, which is more than 1,000-page-long, gives details regarding the projects undertaken without an assessment of needs or even a cost estimate.
The Court concluded in the report that the investment projects and contracts which are related to the PetroCaribe fund were not managed as per the principles of economy and efficiency.
Set up by the initiative of the former president of Haiti, Hugo Chavez, the PetroCaribe program allows the multiple Caribbean and Latin American countries to benefit from the Venezuelan loans under a system of preferential delivery of oil.
Without any accountability to Venezuela, the six successive Haitian administrations since the year 2008 have spent around $2 billion on projects, for the most part without concern for basic public funds management.
The High Court of Auditors has also condemned the lack of cooperation on the part of the institutions, which it said has hindered the investigative work in two initial reports, which were published in January and May 2019.
For example, the judges were unable to trace a single contract for building an industrial park and 1,500 houses outside Port-au-Prince, which is the most ambitious public urban development project after the 2010 earthquake.
The said project ended in 2014.
However, the Court said on Monday that over $46 million were paid to a single company, named Constructora ROFI SA, for the unfinished project.
Constructora ROFI SA belongs to a Dominican senator, Felix Bautista, who was sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department for corruption in June 2018.
Having been unable to consult various contracts, the Court said that it was unable to rule on the relevance of millions of dollars which were spent between 2012 and 2014 to strengthen the police force of Haiti.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
