A Senatorial session is expected to take place Tuesday, January 30, 2018, to examine the so called “PetroCaribe” corruption report, penned by the Senate’s ethic commission late last year, which recommended charges against more than 15 personalities, including two former Prime ministers: Jean Max Bellerive and Laurent Lamothe.
This will be the third attempt to formally vote the contentious report since the first one on November 14th, which was then postponed for November 28th.
The PetroCaribe Corruption report remains one of the most sensitive issues about the Haitian President's administration as most of those accused in the damning 686 pages report are either current high ranking officials in the cabinet of President Jovenel Moise or former officials of the Michel Martelly government; the latter handpicked Moise as successor.
President Jovenel Moise who wants to make the fight against corruption the hallmark of his administration, continues to press lawmakers of his own party, (PHTK) who makes up the majority in the senate, to vote against the report. The President has also not taken any actions against his Chief of Staff, Wilson Laleau, nor the Secretary of the Presidency who are both accused of embezzlement.
The inability of the Senate to take any actions against those accused in what the report called a " large scale state fraud", is directly due to President Jovenel Moise own efforts, as he himself has admitted during his address to the Haitian community in Paris on the sidelines of One Planet Summit ,"But thanks be to God, I have people everywhere. I have people inside the system, we found a way to drag things." referencing to said report which the president has called "politically motivated" and a "witch hunt."
The Senate, since the last two attempted sessions, has a new leader at Its head. Joseph Lambert was elected president, replacing Youri Latortue, one of the co-authors of the infamous report. Joseph Lambert who received the overwhelmed support of the PHTK, is one of the most corrupt and influential figures in Haitian politics. He was listed in 2006 by the U.S government for drug trafficking, as revealed through a batch of documents released by Wikileaks in 2008.
Petrocaribe is the name of the loan program launched in 2006 by Hugo Chavez for the benefit of several Latin American and Caribbean countries that buy oil products from Venezuela. The senate's ethic commission concluded that more some $3 billion of that fund were "mismanaged, wasted, stolen and embezzled."
