Economy of Haiti - Heavy Corruption

Heavy Corruption

According to a World Bank report in 2006, "In Haiti, the process of business regulations is complex and customs procedures are lengthy." On average, opening a business took 204 days. For comparison, the average was 73.3 days in Latin America and 16.3 days in OECD countries. It took an estimated 5 years and 65 bureaucratic procedures for a private person to buy land from the state. It took 683 days to register a property. All Latin American and Caribbean countries except Cuba and Venezuela enjoyed much more economic freedom than Haiti on the Index of Economic Freedom of 2006.

The political elite is also involved in various criminal businesses. Leading members of the military and police have cooperated with the illegal drug trade in Haiti since the 1980s. The Service d'Intelligence National, nominally a counter-narcotics agency created after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, participated in drug trafficking. After the 1991 Haitian coup d'état which toppled Aristide for the first time, members of the coup regime, notably Chief of National Police Michel François, were accused of drug smuggling. Later Beaudoin Ketant, a notorious international drug trafficker, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's close partner, and his daughter's godfather, claimed that Aristide "turned the country into a narco-country; it's a one-man show; you either pay (Aristide) or you die".

According to the BBC, pyramid schemes "were only real economic initiative of the Aristide years." Estimated $200 million was lost in these scams.