How a bank bribery scandal rocking Haiti threatens U.S.-backed transition to elections

The alleged shakedown unfolded over 30 minutes inside room 408 in Pétion-Ville’s Royal Oasis Hotel east of Port-au-Prince, where an elevator takes guests to a presidential suite and a rooftop overlooks a brightly colored mountainside shantytown.

There, on a sweltering May afternoon, three members of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council — tasked with lifting the country out of its deepening crisis and prepare for elections — met with the director of one of the country’s state-owned commercial banks and allegedly asked him to pay 100 million Haitian gourdes, about $758,000, if he wanted to keep his job.

When Raoul Pierre-Louis, chairman of the board of the National Bank of Credit, BNC, said he didn’t have that kind of cash, he says he was told by one of the council members, “You’re the president of a bank. Figure it out.” The council member, Louis Gérald Gilles, then invited himself and fellow council member Smith Augustin to dinner at Pierre-Louis’ house the following Saturday, where the pressure continued.

That was the version of events Pierre-Louis gave investigators last week as he appeared alongside his lawyer before the country’s Anti-Corruption Unit. Although there had been whispers about council members asking heads of government agencies for kickbacks to keep their jobs, the accusations became public last month when a letter Pierre-Louis wrote to Prime Minister Garry Conille on July 24 detailing the accusations and asking for beefed-up security for him and his family — was leaked.

Pierre-Louis wrote that Presidential Council members Gilles, Augustin and Emmanuel Vertilaire told him he would be replaced if he didn’t pay up. All three have vehemently denied asking for a bribe, rejected calls for their resignation and have accused Pierre-Louis of trying to tarnish their reputations. Gilles has said that the accusations are an attempt to destabilize the council, which has seven voting members and two observers sharing power with Conille.

On Thursday, Conille sent Pierre-Louis a letter informing him he was out of a job and that a commission will take charge of the bank until a new board of directors is named. Such commissions are usually reserved for banks that have been mismanaged, which the banker’s lawyer, Sonet Saint-Louis, insists has not been the case during Pierre-Louis’ four-year tenure. Saint-Louis says Pierre-Louis is protesting the decision.

In a country where high-level officials are rarely prosecuted for corruption despite widespread allegations that government officials use the country’s coffers to enrich themselves, few observers appear surprised by the accusations — or believe that they will lead to criminal charges.

But the scandal’s ripple effects could have serious repercussions for the U.S.-backed transition efforts, aimed at stabilizing Haiti to prepare for the first presidential and parliamentary elections in nine years. The bribery accusations also risk eroding the council’s already fragile leadership, and could fracture the tense working relationship between the council and the prime minister.

“Politically speaking, there is a real danger here,” said Thomas Lalime, a Haiti economist and longtime observer of the country’s politics.

Two of the accused, Augustin and Gilles, are poised to head the council as rotating presidents before the end of the its mandate in February 2026, when Haiti is supposed to swear in a new president and Parliament, effectively ending the political transition.

Augustin is scheduled to take the reins from current President Edgard Leblanc Fils in October, followed by Gilles in 2025.

“You can arrive at a situation where the elections that are supposed to lift us out of what we are in could make the situation even worse,” said Lalime, adding that suspicions about kickbacks now cloud every decision being made in filling government posts.

Political firestorm

Scandals often have a short shelf life in Haiti’s hyperactive political rumor mill. But the current accusations have dominated the news cycle and public discourse for weeks. They have also set off a firestorm as politicians, sensing a potential storm brewing, position themselves into new alliances.

The political parties and coalitions represented on the council are split. The backers of Augustin and Vertilaire, EDE/RED/Compromis Historique and Pitit Desalin, have publicly defended the two. Members of a third group known as the December 21 coalition are divided in their support for Gilles. Two other groups with representatives on the council have outright demanded the three council members’ resignation.

Liné Balthazar, who heads the Haitian Tèt Kale Party, PHTK, said the resignations would preserve the council’s credibility. PHTK is part of the alliance of political parties represented by current President Leblanc on the council. The Montana Accord, the coalition of civic groups whose blueprint for a transition after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse gave birth to the idea of a presidential council and an appointed prime minister, called the latest allegations “too much.”

The Montana Accord has accused the council members of betraying the fight against corruption and accused them of standing silent against the bribery accusations and allegations that council members have embezzled funds from the National Palace’s intelligence budget and accepted kickbacks from oligarchs.

“Every week the population hears about a scandal,” the Montana group said.

An Aug. 9 letter, jointly signed by the Montana Accord and the alliance backing Leblanc, urged him as head of the council to take “precautionary measures” against his fellow members, launch an internal investigation to prevent future scandals and order audits of all aspects of government administration. The letter also calls for formal discussions on rooting out corruption.

“It’s inconceivable,” the letter said, that the council “remains silent in the face of serious suspicions of corruption.... Despite public denunciations, formal complaints and the expectations of the public, it is unacceptable that neither the members of the [transitional council] nor the head of the government take the measures that the law, morality and the political context call for in such circumstances.”

Conille, the prime minister, has not taken a public position. But on Thursday, during a visit to the Interior Ministry, he lashed out against corrupt politicians in general.

“The real enemies of the people are the corruptors and the corrupted who squander public funds,” he said.

Augustin told Radio Métropole that there had indeed been a meeting at the Royal Oasis hotel and a subsequent gathering at Pierre-Louis’ home. But the shakedown allegation, he argued, “is fabricated.” On July 30, Augustin filed a defamation suit giving Pierre-Louis 24 hours to withdraw his “baseless complaint,” and he demanded a public apology.

Former Sen. Jean-Charles Moïse, whose Pitit Desalin party is represented on the presidential council by Vertilaire, accused Pierre-Louis last week of manipulating WhatsApp text messages that the banker and his lawyer have presented to bolster their accusations. The party, Moïse said, has issued a legal summons for Pierre-Louis to authenticate the exchanges or risk further legal action. The banker has not reacted publicly to either filing.

Lalime, the economist, said the corruption allegations are troubling because the BNC bank nearly fell into dissolution in the late 1990s due to political cronyism and poor governance.

Successive Haitian governments used the commercial bank as a cash cow for state-owned enterprises — and as a means to buy parliamentary support. At the same time, politically connected businessmen have used BNC to get loans they have no intention of repaying.

Weakening the bank

Pierre-Louis’s lawyer, Saint-Louis, has accused the three presidential council members of trying “to weaken the bank” — which has been generating profits and turning them over to the Haitian government — by demanding the bribe, which would have required his client to raid the bank’s accounts.

None of the three men, Saint-Louis said, have government portfolios that involve the banking sector; that responsibility belongs to council member Fritz Alphonse Jean, the representative of the Montana Accord.

Saint-Louis said both the May 25 hotel meeting and the dinner gathering a week later at Pierre-Louis’ home happened as the council was in the midst of selecting BNC’s new board of directors.

He questioned why a meeting involving a state bank didn’t take place at their presidential offices, “and why did it happen after business hours?”

Saint-Louis added that under Haitian law, the burden of proof about the bribery accusation rests not with his client but on the council members he accused. He said the three accused council members are the only ones on the presidential committee who hold credit cards with $20,000 limits that “they solicited from Raoul Pierre-Louis.”

Scandals dog presidential council

Since its formation on April 3, Haiti’s presidential council has selected a new prime minister, welcomed a Kenya-led multinational force to take on violent gangs and begun assembling an electoral council to organize elections.

But the council has had a rocky start, as members seek to reward supporters and members of their parties with government jobs. One area under scrutiny: the naming of directors to ministries and government agencies.

One director told the Miami Herald he was approached by someone close to a Presidential Council member who asked him for a nearly $300,000 bribe to keep his post. The official said he did not pay.

On Sunday, three former Caribbean prime ministers who were involved in the original political negotiations that led to the creation of the presidential council arrived in Port-au-Prince, invited by council president Leblanc. The Caribbean leaders are looking at the Kenya-led mission’s efforts and the relations between Conille and the council. But they are also concerned about the bribery scandal.

Brian Nichols, the top U.S. diplomat for the Western Hemisphere who visited Haiti last month, said the appointment of directors in Haiti’s government is “a really important governance step.”

“We hope that and expect that high quality, talented, technically proficient individuals will get those positions and be able to provide oversight and leadership within ministries to allow them to carry on their work,” he said.

Nichols added that “the issue of transparency and combating corruption in Haiti is …a topic that’s been on the agenda for generations,” and one that U.S. officials have made their position clear on in conversations with Conille and the presidential council.

‘Corruption is a crime against humanity’

Hérold Jean-Francois, a Port-au-Prince based journalist and political analyst, believes Haiti is at a crucial point, as millions struggle to feed themselves and their families in the face of surging gang violence. Haitians, he said, are fed-up with corruption.

“People believe this is scandalous,” he said, referring to the bribery accusations against the council members.

But Haiti has a centuries’ old history of corruption that has depleted the country’s resources, he said.

“The fact that people in the government embezzle all this money... to enrich themselves and their families is a crime against humanity,” he said. “The country needs leaders who are concerned about the problems and not their personal enrichment.”