Financial Forensics for Credible Elections in Haiti
Residents of Cite-Soleil line up to cast their vote in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. (AP News)
Acronyms & Glossary
Core institutions involved in Haiti’s electoral and financial oversight framework.
| Acronym | Full Name (French) | English Translation | Role / Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| TPC | Conseil Présidentiel de Transition | Transitional Presidential Council | Temporary executive body established under the April 2024 agreement to organize elections and oversee the transition to elected governance by February 2026. |
| CEP | Conseil Électoral Provisoire | Provisional Electoral Council | Haiti’s national electoral authority responsible for organizing, managing, and certifying elections. |
| ULCC | Unité de Lutte Contre la Corruption | Anti-Corruption Unit | Primary anti-corruption agency investigating misuse of public funds and corruption in state institutions. |
| UCREF | Unité Centrale de Renseignements Financiers | Central Financial Intelligence Unit | Financial intelligence authority monitoring suspicious transactions and combating money laundering and illicit financial flows. |
| DGI | Direction Générale des Impôts | General Directorate of Taxes | National tax authority responsible for fiscal collection, compliance, and verification of candidate and party tax filings. |
| CSCCA | Cour Supérieure des Comptes et du Contentieux Administratif | Supreme Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes | Haiti’s highest audit institution overseeing public spending and ensuring constitutional financial oversight of elections. |
-
Haiti’s elections have lost credibility because campaign finance operates almost entirely outside the law. Despite existing legal frameworks, there are no functional systems to trace donations, verify spending, or enforce penalties. As a result, wealthy elites and criminal networks use hidden money to buy influence, push away competition, and capture the state. Gangs now can act as political financiers, using illicit revenue to fund candidates who will protect their interests. These dynamics have eroded public trust, and turned electoral politics into a vehicle for corruption and insecurity rather than democratic transformation.
-
This article proposes creating a Financial Forensics Electoral Bureau (FFEB) within the electoral council (CEP). The FFEB would bring together experts from Haiti’s anti-corruption, tax, and financial intelligence agencies to track campaign money in real time, detect illegal funding, and ensure that violations lead to prosecution.
-
By making campaign finance transparent and enforceable, the FFEB, supported by its Financial Forensics Electoral Credibility Index (FFECI), would help rebuild trust in elections. It shifts Haiti’s elections from being controlled by possible illicit money to being guided by accountability, transparency, and Haitian-led oversight.
Introduction
Should an election take place within the next two years in Haiti, it would represent a return to the democratic process after nearly a decade without an election. It would constitute a pivotal moment aiming at restoring elected governance and determining whether the country can overcome the crises that have defined its path since before 2021. The last national elections in 2015–2016 were undermined by low voter turnout and widespread allegations of fraud, irregularities, and non-transparent campaign financing.
The Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) was established under the April 2024 political agreement and expected to organize elections and transfer power to a legitimate government by February 2026. However, corruption and governance inefficiency have prevented the CPT from meeting these main objectives. Past elections have revealed systemic corruption in which elite networks and informal power brokers consistently control candidate access and outcomes, resulting in extremely low citizen trust. The result, 93% of Haitians express no confidence in the country’s electoral system, one of the lowest in the region, and 88.6% view elections as poorly conducted, according to a 2024 national survey by Policité and Internews. Similarly, a 2024 BTI Report finds that only 37% of Haitians believe the country is a democracy, showing great distrust in the country’s public institutions.
CEP (Conseil Électoral Provisoire), Haiti's electoral authority, manages candidate registration and vote counting but lacks the technical capacity to efficiently oversee campaign finances or detect illicit funding. Electoral credibility must be grounded in campaign finance transparency, monitoring, and enforcement, especially as gang networks with stated political goals and independent sources of illegal income pose a credible threat to electoral outcomes. Preventing illegal money from buying candidates or distorting elections is essential for national security and for ensuring a path to governance that enables sustained development and breaks cycles of post-election violence, state capture, and international intervention. With gangs controlling an estimated 90% of Port-au-Prince and the international community focused on Haiti's stability, the window for implementing a strong electoral system is narrow but vital.
To address this, Haiti must create a Financial Forensics Electoral Bureau (FFEB), a specialized unit within CEP staffed by investigators from Haiti's anti-corruption agency (ULCC) and financial intelligence unit (UCREF), the tax institution (DGI), with support from the national audit court (CSCCA). By integrating financial oversight into the electoral process, Haiti can transform elections from unpredictable, crisis-prone democratic events into reliable tools for ensuring stability and good governance.
Criminal Electoral Financing
Haiti possesses campaign finance laws that, if enforced, could ensure electoral transparency. The country does not have a permanent electoral law; instead, each election cycle is governed by a new electoral decree that often updates or replaces previous regulations.
Chronology of Haiti’s Campaign Finance Framework (2008–2025):
2008
The Electoral Law required detailed disclosure of all donations above 100,000 gourdes, with monthly reporting to the CEP from candidate registration through campaign closure (2008 Electoral Law, Ch. X, Sec. B, Art. 135, p. 41). Source
2013
Building on previous provisions, the Electoral Law further strengthened transparency and accountability by clarifying reporting obligations and reinforcing oversight mechanisms (2013 Electoral Law, Ch. X, Sec. B, Arts. 130–135.1, pp. 34–36). Source
2014
The Political Parties Law introduced regulations on party financing, allowing parties to fund themselves through member contributions, donations (capped at HTG 2,000,000 from individuals and HTG 10,000,000 from legal entities annually), and public subsidies based on electoral performance. Parties are required to submit annual financial reports to the Ministry of Finance and the Cour Supérieure des Comptes et du Contentieux Administratif, which are publicly accessible. Campaign financing for candidates remains separately regulated, with violations punishable by fines, suspension, or revocation of legal recognition (2014 Political Parties Law, Ch. VI, Secs. I–IV, Arts. 33–46, pp. 8–9). Source
2015
The Electoral Decree established spending limits (100 million gourdes for presidential candidates and 20 million for senators) and required that donations exceeding 50,000 gourdes be made through traceable banking channels. Penalties for violations include loss of voting rights, disqualification, or forfeiture of office for candidates, and barring parties from presenting candidates for 2–5 years (2015 Electoral Decree, Ch. X, Secs. A–B, Arts. 125–131, pp. 56–58). Source
2021
The 2021 Electoral Decree raised spending limits to 150 million gourdes for presidential candidates and 30 million for senators, and required that donations over 100,000 gourdes be made through traceable banking channels. Spending ceilings were also established for other offices (2021 Electoral Decree, Title VI, Secs. A–B, Arts. 200–216). Source
2025
The 2025 Electoral Decree increased campaign spending limits to 500 million gourdes for presidential candidates and 70 million for senators, and required that donations exceeding 250,000 gourdes be made through traceable banking channels. It also raised donation ceilings across all offices and maintained public financing solely for parties and coalitions with approved candidates, excluding independent candidates. Spending caps were defined for all other elected positions (2025 Electoral Decree, Title VI, Secs. A–B, Arts. 183–199).
“Female candidates benefit from a 50% reduction in registration fees. Any candidate with a disability benefits from a fifty percent (50%) reduction in registration fees. After file review, any candidate holding a master’s degree receives a 20% discount on registration fees. If the candidate holds a doctoral degree, the discount is 30%.” (2025 Electoral Decree, Title III, Secs. B, Arts. 163–165)
Source
Non-Compliance
Yet these legal frameworks exist only on paper and lack the infrastructure to enforce disclosure and monitoring requirements. Analysis of the 2015–2016 elections reveals non-compliances, and reports from the period point to irregular financing practices. For instance, there were allegations that PetroCaribe funds were diverted and that the ruling party at the time, PHTK, spent as much as $60 million to consolidate legislative influence. This example shows the absence of transparency and donor disclosure in campaign finance. Thus, despite laws requiring monthly reporting, enforcement remained weak, and many financial disclosures were incomplete or inconsistently verified, a structural gap in accountability. Such gaps demonstrate a reluctance among Haitian political elites to implement oversight mechanisms that could enforce accountability and transparency. However, this pattern mirrors broader trends across Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years, where significant campaign spending often occurs off-the-books through anonymous intermediaries, cash disbursements, and non-transparent procurement contracts, frequently violating banking and transparency requirements, as demonstrated by widespread vote-buying (25% regionally) and perceptions of private interest capture (65%) according to Transparency International.
Elections Under Illicit Influence
The lack of enforcement has opened doors for both wealthy elites, who traditionally buy influence through patronage deals, and now criminal gangs, who seek political control and influence with resources built on illicit trade. This represents a new and dangerous escalation in threats to fair elections, with both actors having the resources and intent to fund favorable candidates in future elections. Current institutional capacity cannot address both threats, and the CEP’s ability to verify financial disclosures or detect sophisticated laundering schemes remains limited, reflecting broader weaknesses in Haiti’s oversight and enforcement institutions.
This issue creates predictable cycles: secret campaign financing lets elites and criminal networks gain influence after elections, which fuels clientelism, violence, and international intervention. However, the stakes go beyond electoral integrity to national independence. When elected officials owe favors to criminal networks or wealthy elites instead of citizens, the government serves private interests rather than the public good. Therefore, integrating financial oversight into elections is key to preventing the takeover of the state by both established elites and emerging criminal actors. In essence, Haiti requires a system for financial monitoring that puts existing laws into practice while providing transparency, accountability, and early warning capabilities.
Electoral Financial Forensics
Mandate & Legal Basis
To address these challenges, Haiti must create the Financial Forensics Electoral Bureau (FFEB) capable of filling the existing gaps. The FFEB would be an independent, specialized wing of the Conseil Électoral Provisoire (CEP), designed to ensure financial credibility in Haitian elections by operationalizing existing but unenforced financial oversight mechanisms. While structurally part of the CEP, the FFEB would operate autonomously and be staffed with experienced agents from the Unité de Lutte Contre la Corruption (ULCC), the Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF), and tax investigators from the Direction Générale des Impôts (DGI), with technical support from the Cour Supérieure des Comptes (CSCCA), as needed. This new institutional branch of the CEP would build upon existing institutional mandates. Article 231 of the 2015 Electoral Decree already requires the CEP to provide quarterly reports to the CSCCA, while Article 128 mandates that political parties receiving public funds submit detailed financial statements with certified accountant signatures. To ensure continuity, especially given that Haiti has yet to have a permanent electoral council, FFEB would operate under the CEP during electoral periods; in the event the CEP becomes inactive, its functions would temporarily fall under the CSCCA. This arrangement would preserve FFEB’s operations and institutional memory until a provisional or permanent electoral council is established. At that point, it would return as a branch of the electoral council.
Operational Functions
The FFEB would coordinate all financial aspects of elections, including candidate and party registration, campaign fund monitoring, and reporting. Its mechanisms would include:
Candidate registration and funding disclosure: FFEB will verify detailed financial statements submitted by candidates, including five years of tax compliance records and fiscal identification numbers (Article 90 ), in real time rather than accepting them at face value.
Escrow accounts for large disbursements: Major campaign expenditures will be processed through monitored accounts to prevent untraceable cash flows, enforcing the mandate that donations above 50,000 gourdes be made through traceable banking channels (Article 133).
Automated detection of potentially illicit sources: Banking, mobile money, and procurement data will be integrated to flag high-risk financial flows, creating proactive oversight rather than reactive monitoring (leveraging Article 132’s monthly reporting requirements).
While FFEB itself would not have prosecutorial authority, irregularities flagged would undergo a structured review process that respects Haiti's constitutional due process protections. When FFEB identifies potential violations, it would first issue a formal notification to the candidate or party, providing seventy-two (72) hours to present explanations or corrective documentation, consistent with the electoral law's contestation timelines in Articles 106-107 of the 2015 electoral decree. If discrepancies remain unresolved after this period, FFEB would prepare a detailed investigative report, which would be simultaneously transmitted to the Bureau du contentieux électoral (the CEP’s electoral dispute chamber) and the Commissaire du Gouvernement (the public prosecutor).
However, when FFEB's structured review process concludes that violations occurred, meaning the candidate/party failed to provide satisfactory explanations within 72 hours, and if FFEB's investigative report documents clear evidence of electoral law violations, the National Electoral Tribunal (TEN). TEN must issue a ruling within fifteen (15) days, meaning that documented breaches of campaign finance laws would trigger automatic disqualification or, if warranted, prosecution. Additionally, all FFEB evidence and judicial proceedings would be publicly documented and accessible, creating the transparency necessary, allowing citizens to make informed voting decisions. This separation keeps FFEB independent as a monitoring branch of the electoral council while making enforcement automatic and public. It respects legal due process but prevents officials from choosing to ignore violations, a problem that has enabled impunity in the past.
The Financial Forensics Electoral Credibility Index – FFECI
Additionally, FFEB would maintain a reporting role using the Financial Forensics Electoral Credibility Index (FFECI), its public-facing transparency tool, which provides insights through a live dashboard on the CEP website publishing reports on candidates’ and political parties’ compliance with financial laws to ensure campaign funds are transparent, legal, and traceable. FFECI would track:
Traceable Funding Score: Percentage of campaign funds from verified legal sources.
Transparency Speed: How quickly candidates report their finances (measured against Article 132's monthly reporting deadlines).
Grassroots vs. Big Money: Ratio of small to large donations, anonymous contributions.
Local Spending Transparency: Percentage of campaign purchases made through traceable contracts (as required by Article 135.2's expenditure documentation).
Criminal Network Alerts: Real-time flagging of suspicious funding patterns.
These insights would enhance electoral transparency by giving access to financial flows, identifying red flags, and monitoring compliance in real time, strengthening transparency, accountability, and trust in the electoral process. Thus, transforming electoral credibility into a predictive instrument capable of preventing criminal and elite capture while supporting long-term governance improvement.
Policy Implications and Paradigm Shift
The creation of the Financial Forensics Electoral Bureau (FFEB) and its public-facing Index (FFECI) would mark a break from Haiti’s sole reliance on ballot-counting and international observation as the core measures of electoral credibility. This gap allows criminal networks to buy influence through hidden funding sources and further erodes Haitians’ trust in the voting process. FFEB would revolutionize this process by making campaign contributions the first step in its oversight and transparency. This shift treats elections as both democratic exercises and financial transactions, and puts Haitians in control of their own electoral integrity, with campaign finance violations leading directly to legal consequences and disqualifications from office.
Recommendations
Embedding financial oversight into Haiti's elections requires coordinated state action linking legal frameworks, institutional development, and enforcement mechanisms. Three critical steps, if implemented together, offer a pathway to control how money moves:
Establishing the Legal Mandate
As the only legitimate body able to legislate by decree, the TPC holds an important responsibility. Without a legal foundation, FFEB cannot exist. The CPT can introduce the proposal to the CEP, which would coordinate with the other independent institutions and provide input, ensuring that any decree issued by the CPT respects existing legal frameworks and the independence of the CEP and these other institutions. Then, the CPT would issue a decree creating FFEB within the CEP, requiring candidates and parties to report their finances, allowing real-time monitoring of campaign funds, and establishing clear rules for referring violations to prosecutors. Given that it is unclear whether the TPC’s mandate will extend beyond February 7th, 2026, this issue should be addressed within this current mandate. This will transform Haiti's current finance laws into effective enforcement mechanisms, guaranteeing the credibility of future elections and preventing further delays in the transition process.
Institutionalization and Operational Authority
Once the decree is issued, the electoral council will integrate the FFEB within its framework. The electoral council must ensure the implementation of FFEB as an independent branch with its own budget, secure IT infrastructure, and procedural authority to collect financial reports and monitor campaign funding in real time. FFEB’s investigative findings are directly referred to the National Electoral Tribunal (TEN), which makes binding decisions on any violations within 15 days. This process ensures that elections are not only monitored but also enforced, linking fair elections closely with criminal justice.
Enforcement Capacity
The credibility of FFEB will rely on staffing. By seconding investigators from ULCC and tax analysts from DGI and financial analysts from UCREF and experts from CSCCA for constitutional financial oversight mandates, the bureau gains the expertise and legitimacy needed to detect laundering schemes, track illicit networks, and prepare prosecutable dossiers. Their presence transforms FFEB from a symbolic office into a forensic engine capable of challenging both elite patronage and gang financing.
Together, these three steps create a plan that puts financial transparency at the heart of Haiti's elections. Without it, elections will keep being tools for criminals and elites to buy power. With it, they become instruments for free and fair electoral competition that strengthen good governance and political stability.
Risks, Limitations, and Mitigation Strategies
The FFEB framework can only be effective if it directly tackles the risks that have historically undermined Haiti's elections. These problems are structural, institutional, financial, and security-related, built up over decades of wealthy elites controlling the system, weak leadership, and foreign support dependence.
Elite and Gang Capture: Haiti's electoral history shows how wealthy elites and political patrons use money to control political and economic outcomes. In 2015–16, candidates with hidden funding sources outspent their competitors, while local strongmen and gangs worked as vote-buyers in key neighborhoods. Today, partnerships between armed groups like the G9 and political backers have spread their influence beyond Port-au-Prince, able to control voter turnout through intimidation. This pattern makes campaign finance oversight not just about transparency but about national security.
Financial Opacity: Approximately 89% of Haitian adults are unbanked, according to a BRH 2018 report, highlighting the limited reach of formal financial services and the reliance on cash, remittances, and informal networks to fund economic and electoral activities. Mobile money services are growing but lack adequate oversight, creating another channel for illicit flows. FFEBs enable the tracing of unusual financial flows, while partnerships with the Banque de la République d’Haïti (BRH) and mobile providers would allow real-time monitoring of large transactions. Public dashboards, supported by donor-funded analytics tools, convert hidden money flows into visible and auditable campaign finance records.
Institutional Fragility: The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has historically been regarded as one of Haiti’s untrusted institutions. The Commissaire du Gouvernement lacks prosecutorial independence, often under executive or elite influence. Meanwhile, the Temporary Presidential Council (TPC) is the only body with the legal mandate to legislate by decree until February 2026, meaning that without its legal authorization, FFEB has no foundation. These vulnerabilities highlight the need for multiple institutions working together: CEP adoption backed by TPC decrees and ULCC/UCREF/DGI/CSCCA staffing to ensure technical independence and to secure continuity beyond 2026.
External Pressures and Donor Dependence: About 80 percent of Haiti’s last electoral budgets have been financed externally, primarily by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations. Funding reliance often creates leverage but also pressure to prioritize speed over integrity, as external actors often view elections primarily as tools for short-term stability. However, the solution lies in aligning donor priorities with FFEB requirements: making technical assistance, IT infrastructure, and monitoring conditional on transparency benchmarks. The transparency that FFEB offers can shift the incentive from speed to credibility.
Security Challenges: Armed groups currently control critical access routes, including Martissant (linking Port-au-Prince to the south) and Croix-des-Bouquets (linking Port-au-Prince to the east). In the last election cycle, polling stations were attacked, ballots burned, and electoral staff targeted. Today, insecurity has worsened, with gangs controlling entire neighborhoods where citizens would need to exercise their constitutional right to vote if there is to be an election. A mitigation plan requires multi-party planning between the CEP, the TPC, and Haiti's armed forces (Haiti's National Police & Haiti's Military) in coordination with the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and UN security experts. Contingency measures can include moving polling stations to safer areas or adopting digital systems to prevent ballot tampering. However, securing voters' physical safety as well as voting logistics in areas controlled by gangs remains the bigger issue when the challenges of reissuing state and electoral identification to close to a million internally displaced persons, many of whom lost their documents when gangs burned their homes, are evident.
By addressing risks in Haiti's real political and security situation, the FFEB–FFECI framework prepares for capture attempts, tackles weak institutions, and creates practical steps for credible elections. Grounded in Haiti's current realities, it shows that transparency can be achievable and enforceable and is essential to stopping the cycle of electoral crises and the political crises that follow elections.
Conclusion
Haiti's 2026 elections will determine whether the country can begin to untangle itself from criminal capture or remain trapped in cycles of instability. The Financial Forensics Electoral Bureau (FFEB) framework and its public Index (FFECI), beyond their technical components, redefine electoral credibility by making financial transparency a cornerstone of democratic legitimacy. By screening out criminal money before it corrupts governance, Haiti can transform elections from sources of crisis into predictors of stability. Success would establish lasting reforms that reshape political financing for decades while shifting from foreign-validated elections to domestically enforced mechanisms through campaign finance oversight. Implementing FFEB decisively paves the way for transparency to replace capture, making elections a trusted foundation where stability, good governance, and national sovereignty can take root.
Haiti Policy House is a not-for-profit institution focusing on Haitian public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan. Haiti Policy House does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2025 by Haiti Policy House. All rights reserved.