February to 3 July 1982 · Haitianspan
Mr Clean lasts six months at the finance ministry
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The donors had insisted on a finance minister they could trust and got Marc Bazin, a World Bank official who brought other Haitian technocrats home with him. He took the job seriously. He put a levy on imported cars and collected it from everyone, pursued unpaid taxes owed by the elite, and cancelled a short term note issue of 3.7 billion dollars that senior officials had been looking forward to, on the ground that it resembled the nineteenth century loans Haiti had spent a hundred years repaying. Time called him Mr Clean. He lasted six months and was dismissed after billing Ernest Bennett, the president's father in law, for about a million dollars in arrears. Out of office in New York, Bazin let friends know that part of his duties had been to find up to 15 million dollars a month in state accounts for transfer to the couple's Swiss bank. Roger Lafontant came back as interior minister. On 3 July 1982, the president's twenty ninth birthday, Bishop Romelus of Jeremie ordained a thirty year old priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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