With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
Laurent Lamothe will not be able to find his Miami residence. According to an American official quoted by the daily Miami Herald, the former Haitian Prime Minister left the country at the end of last month. This is what the State Department was obviously waiting for to sanction him.
In his statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken takes up the suspicions of corruption that have long weighed on the person concerned. He is accused of embezzling at least $60 million from the infrastructure investment and social protection fund for his personal benefit. Petrocaribe.
The fund was fed by Venezuela and was supposed to help Haiti rebuild after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The next year, Laurent Lamothe had played a vital role in the election to the presidency of the former musician Michael Martelly before becoming a minister, then Prime Minister until 2014. He had been removed from office at the insistence of the United States. At the time, Laurent Lamothe was already accused of numerous acts of corruption which he has always denied. To date, he is the most prominent figure sanctioned by the Biden administration, Sanctions that come after those imposed by Canada for the same reasons.
>> To read also: Haiti: the Court of Auditors again pinpoints the power in the Petrocaribe scandal
2023-06-03 14:52:17
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