A Short Note on Corruption in Telecommunications in the Republic of Haiti

In early 2010 an earthquake struck 25 km from the capital of Haiti causing many deaths and considerable damage to infrastructure. Both of which were made worse by the poor quality of construction due to endemic corruption, with serious risks that the efforts to bring relief created opportunities for yet more corruption. Since its independence in 1804, Haiti has struggled to create a stable government. The severe autocracies of the Duvaliers, with their tonton macoutes, alternated with short lived military regimes and rare elections of presidents. There has never been effective government or governance, with rival elites competing for power, then pillaging and rent seeking, so that corruption was endemic – one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. It has also the poorest country in the Americas, seemingly unable to achieve sustainable development. The licensing of mobile network operators has occurred in an unstructured, random fashion that defies explanation. Ownership has been obscure and may have been designed to conceal nepotism and corruption. One operator was driven out of business by rulers who disliked its owner. A military-owned operator from South-East Asia was allowed to enter the market on the commitment of significant investments, but without payment of any fees. Prosecutors in the USA identified smaller operators which had been bribing politicians and officials at Haiti Teleco, by way of shell companies, in order to get cheaper rates for calls. A series of convictions has resulted in over forty years of jail sentences. By means of money laundering charges some of the recipients of the bribes have been extradited and convicted. At its heart was the state monopoly over inbound calls to Haiti, which made it an obvious and easy target for rent seeking. The admission by Patrick Joseph, a former senior official at Haiti Teleco, that he was cooperating with prosecutors in the USA appears to have resulted in the murder of his octogenarian father. This seems to have been an attempt to stop him identifying “Official B” as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, formerly president of the Republic of Haiti, who has consistently denied being behind these scams