Fate of Baby Doc's fortune swings on court ruling

It is 23 years since "Baby Doc" Duvalier was forced out of power in Haiti, but a Swiss court will soon decide whether the kleptocratic dictator can get his hands on 7 million Swiss francs ($9.4 million) frozen in a Swiss bank account since 1986, while the country he and his father ruled for more than 30 years endured their grim legacy of poverty and political turmoil.

Haiti's Government has requested a "mutual legal assistance proceeding", asking the Swiss to confiscate the assets - and the long process should reach its final stage before Christmas in the Swiss Supreme Court.

"The aim for the Haitian Government is to say, 'Look, it doesn't pay in the end'," says Valentin Zellweger, deputy director of Switzerland's Directorate of Public International Law, who has been pursuing the case.

"We had excellent co-operation with the Haitian Government; it was this which allowed us to go as far as we did."

It hasn't been simple: the Duvalier family assets were squirrelled away in a vehicle called the Brouilly Foundation, with links to Liechtenstein and Panama, and Baby Doc and his relatives have fought hard to get their hands on the cash, most recently appealing to the Swiss Supreme Court.

"All these families tell us they are destitute and live in very difficult conditions. Strangely, they all have excellent lawyers," Zellweger says.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule within weeks on whether the funds can finally be released back into the hands of the Haitian people.

In theory, the Duvaliers could take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but even if they choose to do so, the Supreme Court judgment will exhaust the Swiss legal process, allowing the funds to be released immediately.

Adrian Fozzard, who heads the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (Star), a joint initiative between the United Nations and the World Bank, says Duvalier is one of a small but growing band of ex-leaders who are discovering that, even decades after they are forced from power, the fruits of their plunder can still be confiscated.

"The idea of going after the proceeds of corruption is relatively new, but there is a general sense that the tools are gradually being put in place."

Aided by the growing international focus on unmasking secretive tax havens since the financial crisis, Fozzard and his colleagues helped to put the issue of chasing down the proceeds of corruption on the agenda for world leaders at the recent G20 meeting.

Since April's London summit, tax havens have rushed to comply with new rules forcing them to hand over information to overseas authorities, but Fozzard and his team would also like to see tougher rules forcing them to co-operate with anti-corruption investigations in faraway countries.

In its early days, the main motivation for chasing down the ill-gotten gains of ex-dictators was to finance development projects in their ravaged countries.

But Star tries to persuade both developing countries, and the wealthy states where their assets are salted away, that it is worth pursuing even small-scale operators - local state governors, minor ministers and so on - to send a clear message that corruption will be tackled.

"The money's great, but it's about the rule of law and good governance: for us, it's about enforcement."

Over 15 years, about US$5 billion ($6.9 billion) has been recovered and estimates suggest there may be many times that to be pursued.

And it's not just the dictators who are finding it more difficult to hide. In a landmark development, a financial intermediary who had helped former Nigerian leader Sani Abacha - who died in 1998 - to conceal his cash on Jersey was arrested in Britain and is expected to stand trial in the new year.

"Pursuing the intermediaries is one of the key things financial centres can do," says Fozzard.

Switzerland has taken an aggressive approach to confiscation, despite its reputation as the home of the shadowy gnomes of Zurich, pre-emptively freezing the assets of dictators who have been forced out of power, while their home countries assemble the evidence to bring them to justice - and even helping to meet the cost of lawyers.

Britain has been less of a pioneer in the field, but it recently set up a proceeds of corruption unit within the London Metropolitan Police, jointly funded by the Department for International Development and the Department for Business.

But the Swiss experience shows that the process can take years of dogged pursuit.

Haiti was ready to give up on the Duvalier assets in 2007, until the Swiss announced they had no choice but to unfreeze the funds.

That caused a public outcry in Haiti, and provoked a renewed commitment from the Government there not to let the case drop.

During one recent case, in which Switzerland was trying to confiscate assets belonging to the Congolese ex-leader, Mobutu Sese Seko, an employee from one of the Swiss banks involved phoned Zellweger and said he had a member of the Mobutu family in front of him, asking why she could not withdraw her money.

The Mobutu case eventually collapsed, because the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo - in which Mobutu's son is a minister - was reluctant to pursue it. This failure underlines the hurdles to pursuing political leaders who, long after being ejected, consider themselves beyond the reach of the law.

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