Fictitious government jobs and contracts, political patronage, embezzlement, and university employees and civil servants who use government bank accounts as their personal checkbooks.
Those are just some of the scandalous findings released late this week by Haiti’s Anti-Corruption Unit following the investigations of 10 different state-run institutions and agencies that include the municipalities of Petit Goave, Fort-Liberte, Saint-Raphael and Anse Rouge; the national lottery; Haiti National Police and the School of Law and Economics in Gonaives.
In all, the conclusion was the same: Haiti’s public administration is a cesspool of corruption in which the actions of civil servants and elected officials go unchecked and they do as they like without concerns about the consequences. The cost has been the loss of millions of dollars from state coffers in a poverty-stricken country lagging behind in development and unable to address deepening inequality in the face of multiple crises.
