Forty Years On, Switzerland Still Holds Haiti's Duvalier Funds

Nearly four decades after Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as 'Baby Doc', fled Port-au-Prince for France on February 7, 1986, the question of funds he held in Switzerland remains a landmark asset-recovery case, according to swissinfo.ch and menafn.com. Switzerland froze the Duvalier assets in mid-April 1986 after Haiti requested mutual legal assistance, in what the report describes as the longest and most complicated restitution case to date. The reporting notes the case developed differently from that of the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos, whose Swiss-held assets the Federal Council froze under emergency legislation in March 1986. Criminal proceedings against Duvalier never materialised in Haiti, a state weakened by the end of the dictatorship and repeated attempted coups. When mutual legal assistance appeared set to fail in 2002, releasing the funds — then estimated at around CHF7.5 million ($4.83 million) — the Federal Council ordered a three-year freeze under emergency legislation, saying it aimed to prevent the Swiss financial centre from being misused. After the freeze was extended twice, Haiti resumed proceedings in May 2008 with a Swiss-funded lawyer. In February 2009, with account holders unable to prove the funds' lawful origin, Swiss authorities decided to return the money to Haiti for development projects, the outlets reported.