> Red Cross and the Clinton Foundation have in common?
HAITI
A decade after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, the former U.S. secretary of state, are routinely portrayed in some quarters as the prime villains in the Caribbean nation's continuing struggles to recover and the failed promise of donor assistance to help lift the ravaged country out of poverty.
It's almost an article of faith among many Haitians that the Clintons somehow siphoned off billions of dollars meant to help clean up and rebuild.
The narrative — coupled with claims that the Clinton Foundation cashed in off development projects in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010, disaster — has been peddled by anti-corruption lawyers in Haiti demanding an audit by government auditors, and even found its way into the 2016 U.S. presidential election: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promoted the unfounded claim as he tried to sway frustrated Haitian-American voters to choose him over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.
Now, as the 10th anniversary of the catastrophic quake approaches, Bill Clinton for the first time opened up about the setbacks in Haiti — a stain on the bright legacy of a former president who had championed democracy there and was the face of the international recovery efforts as he pledged to help Haiti "build back better."
In an expansive interview with the Miami Herald at the Manhattan office of his Clinton Foundation, a mystified Clinton shot down accusations of stolen donations and reflected on his complicated relationship with Haiti, both as the U.N. special envoy-turned-reconstruction czar, and through the charitable works of his Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund that he and former President George W. Bush co-chaired to raise money after the quake.
"A lot of people seem to think that our group, the reconstruction commission, was getting money. We didn't," said Clinton, who served as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, along with Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. "We never took any donations."
An advisory group with an 18-month mandate, the U.S.-backed panel was established by the Haitian government to accelerate rebuilding by ensuring that the efforts of foreign government donors, non-governmental organizations and businesses were aligned with the Haitian government's development plan. Members included all donors who pledged $100 million or more to the recovery, plus Cuba and Venezuela with observer status, and 12 Haitians representing various sectors of society.
It was the first time, Clinton said, that Haitians from every major sector of society "had the first chance they ever really had to work with the international community."
"It was a big cumbersome process, but it was totally transparent and we kept up with who funded what, who got the money, and did an after-action audit on all of them," Clinton said about the commission, which ended its mandate on Oct. 21, 2011. "That's a matter of record."
Over the years, however, the commission's failure to fulfill the international community's promise of better construction and free public housing for Haitians has become a lightning rod in the debate over what happened to all the promised aid.
In Haiti, some blame the commission and the man at the head of it — Clinton.
The fact is that 10 years after the quake, there is no clear accounting of how much of the $13.3 billion that donors promised over 10 years remains uncollected.
One recent United Nations update underlined part of the problem. The World Bank, for example, had hoped to oversee a big chunk in its Haiti Reconstruction Fund but wound up collecting just $411.40 million from donors, roughly a quarter of its original target of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.
With the commission no longer active after its mandate expired under Haitian President Michel Martelly in 2011, it is unclear how much remains outstanding, given that no one has been pushing donors to pay up.
"I knew what would happen, and what happened happened," Clinton said about Haiti's decision to not renew the commission's role and allow it to transition to a fully country-led Haitian Development Agency. "It slowed the willingness of the donors to honor their commitments and probably made them even more determined to control how the money was spent. That's after I was done."
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https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/bill-clinton-once-enjoyed-bright-legacy-haiti-then-2010-earthquake-struck