Investigators in Haiti accuse three members of transitional presidential council of corruption

Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An anti-corruption agency in Haiti has accused three members of the country’s transitional presidential council of bribery in a scathing report that threatens to destabilize the country’s fragile political stability. The Unit for Combating Corruption says that Smith Augustin, Emmanuel Vertilaire and Louis Gérald Gilles are accused of demanding more than $750,000 from the director of the government-owned National Bank of Credit to secure his job. The agency says Gilles organized a meeting among the council members, the former bank director, Raoul Pascal Pierre-Louis, and Haitian consul Lonick Leandre at the Royal Oasis Hotel in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where the demand was made.