Haiti: Council Voting System Threatens Anti-Corruption War
Head of the Transitional Council in Haiti, Garry Conille, Aug 2024 Photo: Que Paso Media Network
September 3, 2024 Hour: 5:11 pm
Last week, the anti-corruption unit questioned the three CPT advisers accused of blackmailing a bank manager.
On Tuesday, official sources stated that Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) is unable to sanction and disqualify three members of the body, a weakness that threatens the Caribbean nation’s anti-corruption fight.
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Reaching a majority in that body requires five votes out of seven, but presidential advisors Louis Gérald Gilles, Smith, Augustin and Emmanuel Vertilair are implicated in the National Credit Bank scandal.
The three of them represent a blocking minority, which makes it impossible to obtain the five votes needed to pass a resolution against them, the daily Haiti Libre reported.
Last week, the anti-corruption unit questioned the three CPT advisers accused of blackmailing a bank manager.
Smith Augustin, Emmanuel Vertilaire and Louis Gérald Gilles, accompanied by their lawyers, answered the investigators’ questions.
They had previously denied the accusations and claimed that it was a politically motivated scheme.
The investigation began after the president of the board of directors of the National Credit Bank, Raoul Pascal Pierre-Louis, wrote a letter to the interim prime minister of Haiti, Garry Conille, in which he revealed that the three directors had asked him for 100 million gourdes (757,575 US dollars) if he wanted to keep his job.
Conille automatically decided to dismiss Pierre-Louis, which sparked a controversy over the fight against corruption in the Antillean nation today.
Conille’s stance was criticised because the anti-corruption unit has not yet reported the findings of the investigation.
To this day, no local media has published the elements used by the interim prime minister to remove him from his post, just when he declared war on corruption when he took over the reins of the Caribbean nation.
Fuente: HaitiLibre-The Independent
