On Jul. 25, Dominican Sen. Felix Bautista will testify before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission in the context of its investigation of the management of Haiti’s Petrocaribe program. The Commission’s controversial President, Sen. Youri Latortue, of the Artibonite, a former advisor to former President Michel Martelly, announced the hearing on Jul. 18.

"We wrote different people, including Sen. Bautista, who is the CEO of the Dominican [construction] firms Hadom and ROFI,” Latortue said. “We received a response from Bautista, who requested a postponement of eight days. He replied and assured us that he will come."

Dominican firms and construction companies have received contracts for many projects financed by the Petrocaribe fund, which is a multi-billion-dollar, low-interest, long-term loan account made possible by the sale of Venezuelan oil products. The Senate Commission is investigating why and how many contracts signed with Dominican companies were breached or canceled by the Haitian government because the projects were abandoned or the companies were unable to complete the projects.

"The Bautista hearing will be extremely important for the Commission,” Sen. Latortue said. “That's why we just signed another letter that we will send to Bautista via the Dominican Embassy in Haiti, to answer questions from senators on the Commission on Mon., Jul. 25 at noon."

In a Mar. 31, 2012 television exposé, Dominican investigative journalist Nuria Piera revealed secret spreadsheets showing that Sen. Bautista had paid some $2.6 million in more than a dozen payments to Michel Martelly as a Haitian candidate, president-elect, and president.

Piera’s documents also show that Bautista gave a $250,000 cash payment in February 2011 to Mirlande Manigat, Martelly’s opponent in the Mar. 20, 2011 presidential run-off.  Sen. Youri Latortue was the head of Manigat’s campaign at the time and claimed to know nothing about the payment, saying Piera’s report was “wrong.”

Sen. Latortue said he recently visited the Dominican Republic during which time he and other Commission members met with Nuria Piera to discuss her investigations, for which she was sued by Bautista. In 2015, Bautista was yet again indicted for corruption. In October 2015, Nuria Piera announced that Washington had cancelled Bautista’s U.S. visa.

For several months, the Haitian Senate has been investigating accusations of misappropriations from the Petrocaribe Fund, subpoenaing ministers, prime ministers, and CEOs to appear before it.

However, many have questioned if, in fact, the Senate Commission, and Sen. Youri Latortue in particular, are covering up, rather than uncovering, corruption. On Apr. 14, 2016, seven leading Haitian popular, student, and worker organizations addressed an open letter to Latortue, questioning if he was fit to be heading a Senate Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission because of 1) doubts about the validity of his 2015 re-election and 2) charges leveled by the U.S. Embassy itself about Youri Latortue being a “poster-boy for political corruption.”

“If you have a clear conscience and you are not a drug-dealer, a completely corrupt politician, a Mafia boss, and an assassin as reported in the newspaper [Haïti Liberté], you must immediately take all formal measures to rapidly address these grave accusations which hang over you today,” the open letter said. “While these big charges hang over you, you have the audacity to self-proclaim yourself President of an Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission. So, Mr. Contested Senator, you take everyone in the population for imbeciles. Don’t you remember you were in the National Palace during the whole Martelly [Tèt Kale] regime giving that clique advice on how to embezzle the money of Petrocaribe and other accounts?”

The Petrocaribe fund was established, despite fierce U.S. sabotage, by the governments of Presidents René Préval and Hugo Chavez between 2007 and 2009. Under the Petrocaribe accord, Venezuela provides Haiti with all the oil it needs, while Haiti pays only 60% up front, the remaining 40% going into the Petrocaribe fund, which is to be paid over 25 years at 1% interest. The fund was aimed at providing capital for Haiti to invest in development projects to “aid the Haitian people.”

During his five years in office from 2011 to 2016, Pres. Martelly, his cronies, and his family are believed to have looted some $2 billion from the Petrocaribe account through bogus development projects which did not in fact help Haitians. In 2013,  Martelly admitted that Venezuela provided 94% of Haiti’s total investment funds.