Haitian Stasis

The scarcity of hard currency and deep cuts in foreign assistance have brought Haiti to a point of complete economic stagnation. Hurricane David and poor crops have curtailed exports drastically. What mother nature has left undone the president has completed, diverting internal revenues from the treasury, which are converted into available dollars and transferred to private bank accounts abroad. At a popular estimate the Duvalier family is worth more than $500 million, cash.Firm evidence of treasury looting was first provided by World Bank Report No. 1243HA of September 25, 1976, revealing that $45.5 million in government revenues for fiscal 1975 were unbudgeted and could not be accounted for. In 1977, according to a report prepared by the U.S. embassy staff in PortauPririce and published by the U.S. Department of Commerce in Foreign Economic Trends (No. 77-148), the “unbudgeted receipts amounted to 60 million in FY/77 and [were] projected at 69 million in FY/78.” Now Jack Anderson provides an update. “Baby Doc,” he says in his column of March 29, “has been stealing millions of dollars in loans provided by the International Monetary Fund.” And what is more, Michele, the president's bride of a year, has been drawing a monthly allowance of $100,000 from the treasury under her husband's authorization.