HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS ALREADY STOLEN BY MARTELLY INSIDERS MAKING ARISTIDE AND PREVAL’S CORRUPTION SEEM LIKE A SUNDAY SCHOOL TEAM. MARTELLY GOVERNMENT IN IMMINENT DANGER OF COLLAPSE….

SOPHIE – GREGORY MAYARD-PAUL, THIERRY MAYARD-PAUL AND OTHERS GET RICH WHILE HAITI SLIDES TOWARDS THE ABYSS…

July 22, 2012

When the earthquake hit, world lenders were already several years into forgiving Haiti’s substantial debts, many of which dated back to millions in loans taken by the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was overthrown in 1986 and suddenly returned last year. In June 2009, seven months before the earthquake, donors wiped out $1.2 billion of the Haitian government’s debt. In January 2010, as the capital lay in ruins, it still was $828 million in the red.

In March 2010, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) said canceling the debt is “one of the simplest but most important things we can do to help Haiti.”

And to date, debt relief is the largest single item the U.S. has spent toward Haiti’s rebuilding: $245 million.

But since taking office in May 2011, President Michel Martelly’s administration has borrowed $657 million, largely from Venezuela for basic fuel needs, but also from Taiwan, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the International Monetary Fund and OPEC. Next year Haiti is expected to spend close to $10 million servicing those debts, according to the IMF.

“The U.S. government cannot dictate how the government of Haiti, as a sovereign country, chooses to address its financial situation,” said USAID’s Haiti task team leader in Washington D.C., Beth Hogan, whose office facilitated the payments. The U.S. is now only providing grants, not loans, to Haiti.

Waters now says she’s disappointed, but not surprised, that Haiti has resumed its borrowing habits.

More than half of Haiti’s annual $1 billion budget comes from foreign aid.

“Haiti needs grants, gifts and loans,” said Haitian official Nau. “Every country in the world has debt and Haiti is no different.”

OFF THE RECORD

A major frustration for watchdogs of the U.S. effort is a lack of transparency over how the millions of dollars are being spent.

From interviews to records requests, efforts to track spending in Haiti by members of Congress, university researchers and news organizations have sometimes been met with resistance and even, in some cases, outright refusals.

As a result, U.S. taxpayers are told they’ve agreed to spend $7.2 million for a project to design and distribute cleaner cooking stoves to 10,000 street vendors and 800 schools and orphanages, but there’s no public accounting for how that will break down: How much might each stove cost? What are the office expenses? What are workers’ salaries?

“The lack of specific details in where the money has gone facilitates corruption and waste, creates a closed process that reduces competition and prevents us from assessing the efficacy of certain taxpayer-funded projects,” said Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat whose district includes the second largest population of Haitian immigrants in the country.

Legislation introduced last year in Congress would direct the Obama administration to report on the status of post-earthquake humanitarian, reconstruction and development efforts in Haiti.

The AP filed a Freedom of Information request to learn what was accomplished and how much was spent on a two-day retreat for 12 senior U.S. staffers in Miami in March 2011. USAID released the hotel sales agreement, the facilitator’s purchase order and an agenda. It did not release information about what was accomplished, and withheld another nine pages, citing concerns that it contained information that had not been finalized.

State Department officials say they are trying to be responsive, noting that in the past nine months, they have coordinated 51 briefings to members of Congress and their staff on Haiti and delivered five congressionally-mandated reports.

One of the problems with following the money in Haiti is that the records are not up to date.

A State Department inspector general report in June found the embassy’s political section retains about 10 linear feet of paper files dating back a decade in several safes, and the narcotics affairs team doesn’t have a coherent filing system.

In its own effort to follow the money, this year the AP began contacting firms that have received U.S. funding since the earthquake. A memo went out two weeks later.

“A series of requests from journalists may come your way,” cautioned Karine Roy, a spokeswoman for the USAID, in an email to about 50 humanitarian aid officials. “Wait for formal clearance from me before releasing any information.”

U.S. contractors, from pollsters to private development firms, told the AP that USAID had asked them not to provide any information, and referred to publicly released descriptions of their projects.

The Durham, North Carolina-based group Family Health International 360, for example, received $32 million, including $10 million for what the State Department described as an “initiative designed to increase the flow of commercially viable financial products and services to productive enterprises, with a focus on semi-urban and rural areas.”

When the AP asked for a budget breakdown, FHI 360 spokeswoman Liza Morris said, “We were pulling that for you but were told that it was proprietary by our funder.”

Who is the funder?

“Our funder,” she said, “is USAID.”

Headline from Haitian-Truth.org. Material excerpted from excellent in-depth article by MARTHA MENDOZA, Associated Press