Titles of Deception: How Haiti’s Institutions Harbor Those Who Steal from the Nation

Introductory Historical Context

The struggle for land in Haiti began with its revolutionary birth in 1804, when former slaves claimed ownership of the plantations they had worked under brutal conditions. Yet what should have been a foundation for equitable development instead became a battleground where power repeatedly trumped justice. Today, Haiti’s land ownership system remains one of the most dysfunctional in the Western Hemisphere—not by accident, but by design.

Haiti’s complex relationship with land ownership has evolved through multiple historical phases, each leaving its mark on current conditions. Following independence, the newly formed government distributed plantation lands to revolutionary generals and soldiers, creating a new landed elite alongside a peasantry that gradually gained access to smaller plots. By the late 19th century, a pattern had emerged wherein urban elites, often with political connections, could manipulate documentation to claim rural lands, while peasants relied primarily on customary tenure arrangements without formal titles.

The U.S. occupation (1915-1934) attempted to impose American property concepts through constitutional changes that allowed foreign ownership, sparking resistance from Haitians who correctly saw this as a threat to sovereignty. During the Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986), land became a political tool as the regime granted plots to supporters and seized properties from opponents. These arbitrary appropriations further undermined the integrity of Haiti’s property system.

Since the 1980s, Haiti has attempted multiple land reform initiatives with support from international organizations, but progress has been minimal. The establishment of Haiti’s National Cadastre Office (ONACA) in 1984 and the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Land Use Planning (CIAT) in 2009 represented institutional attempts to address the chaos, but both have been undermined by chronic underfunding, political interference, and entrenched corruption. According to a 2019 study supported by the Canadian government, only 40% of property ownerships in Haiti hold legal titles, and just 5% of the national territory is officially recorded.

This historical context has created a perfect environment for systematic land theft through Haiti’s compromised institutions. While the nation’s constitution theoretically guarantees private property rights, the reality on the ground is a predatory system where those with connections to power can manipulate institutional weaknesses to seize land with impunity, while ordinary Haitians find themselves powerless against these forces.

The Erasure of Historical Truth

The systematic theft of land in Haiti is often portrayed as simply the result of poor record-keeping, technological limitations, or “cultural” approaches to property. This framing obscures the deliberate nature of institutional corruption that enables land grabbing. International organizations frequently cite Haiti’s “lack of a modern cadastre system” as a technical challenge rather than acknowledging it as a manufactured crisis that benefits powerful interests.

The World Bank and other development agencies have consistently framed Haiti’s property challenges as technical problems requiring technical solutions, while downplaying the politics of land theft. This approach fails to address how Haiti’s governing institutions actively participate in and profit from property insecurity. The World Bank’s Doing Business ranking places Haiti 180th globally in property registration efficiency, but rarely explores why this inefficiency persists despite decades of “reform” efforts.

A particularly insidious form of erasure occurs through the selective destruction of land records, which eliminates evidence of legitimate ownership. In 2010, the General Directorate of Taxes archives in Les Cayes—a city with Haiti’s highest number of land disputes—burned down, destroying critical documentation that could have resolved ownership claims. Such convenient destruction of records has occurred repeatedly across Haiti, creating information vacuums that enable fraud.

Media coverage further distorts understanding by focusing on individual cases of corruption rather than exposing the institutional networks that systematize land theft. When journalists do attempt to uncover these networks, they face severe risks. In October 2022, journalist Gary Tesse was murdered after reporting on corrupt prosecutor Ronald Richemond’s involvement in land theft. Tesse’s brutal killing—his body was found mutilated with eyes gouged out, tongue cut out, and genitals removed—sent a clear message to others who might investigate land-related corruption.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the erasure involves maintaining a narrative that Haiti’s land problems stem from the absence of formal institutions rather than acknowledging how existing institutions actively enable theft. As one anonymous source involved in land fraud told The Haitian Times: “We’re well organized. We’ve got our own police officers, judges, public notaries, even surveyors”. This institutional capture represents not institutional weakness but a repurposing of state power for predatory ends.

Spotlight: The Institutional Architecture of Land Theft

The Judicial System: Courts as Instruments of Dispossession

Haiti’s judicial system, rather than resolving land disputes fairly, often serves as the primary mechanism through which land theft is legitimized. The case of prosecutor Ronald Richemond in Les Cayes exemplifies how justice officials weaponize their authority to facilitate property theft. According to Ricardo “Chito” Bain, a former associate, “Stealing land was his specialty”. Richemond’s methodology reveals the institutionalized nature of this corruption:

“When someone owns a plot of land and someone else wants to dispossess them of it, they need a court decision in their favor,” Bain explained. “A way to do that is with an exequatur, an authorization given by the government commissioner. Ronald Richemond took advantage of this to make a fortune”.

This process typically begins with manufactured disputes over inheritance or boundary lines, where officials like Richemond issue legal orders without proper investigation or documentation. In one documented case, Richemond demanded “three-sixteenths” of a contested property in exchange for ruling in favor of one family in a land dispute. After receiving this “fee,” he would sell the acquired plots or distribute them to associates and lovers.

The courts’ role in enabling land theft extends beyond individual corrupt officials. Haiti’s justice system is “plagued by insecurity, corruption, strikes, and political interference”. Criminal groups have physically taken over court buildings, including the Port-au-Prince Palace of Justice in July 2022, stealing or destroying evidence and records. With courts operating in this environment, legitimate property owners have little recourse when their land is targeted.

The perverse reality is that approaching the legal system for help often makes landowners more vulnerable. Shopkeeper Evens Bernavil, who filed a complaint against Richemond over a land dispute, found himself facing a fabricated arrest warrant for “forgery and death threats”. While Bernavil eventually won his case—a rare victory—he first had to spend three months in hiding, fearing for his life.

The Cadastral System: Designed to Fail

Haiti’s land administration institutions—primarily the National Cadastre Office (ONACA) and the General Tax Directorate (DGI)—operate with deliberate inefficiency that creates opportunities for fraud. According to Arnel Rémy, a Haitian attorney, “There is a network specializing in this practice. Honestly, the General Tax Directorate should speak because there are fraudsters within the institution issuing multiple original property titles”.

The absence of a comprehensive land registry is often portrayed as a technical challenge, but maintaining this information gap serves powerful interests. Without a centralized, transparent record of who owns what, officials can issue contradictory titles or “validate” fraudulent claims without accountability. This systematic ambiguity creates a landscape where, as one source involved in land fraud explained, “The most important thing, when you take over land that doesn’t belong to you, isn’t to build on it—but to resell it and use the money to buy other plots legally”.

The cadastral process is intentionally cumbersome—14 times longer than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average—and prohibitively expensive at up to 15% of a building’s construction cost. These barriers effectively exclude most Haitians from formalizing their property rights while creating opportunities for officials to extract bribes at each step.

The Security Forces: Enforcement for Sale

Police and security forces frequently serve as the muscle behind institutional land theft. In the Richemond case, his armed men—including Patrick Clervil—carried out threats, beatings, and property destruction against those who resisted land appropriation. When Vanté Merita opposed the seizure of her family’s land, her house was set on fire, and she was beaten and arrested by Richemond’s enforcers.

This pattern repeats across Haiti, where security forces selectively enforce property laws based on who provides the highest payment rather than legal merit. The Daphna Surin family case in Pétion-Ville exemplifies this dynamic, with Judge Eno René Louis allegedly carrying out arbitrary arrests without warrants and outside legal hours when the family opposed a contested eviction. Four family members and two neighbors were detained for 48 days before being released.

The involvement of security forces in land theft creates a perverse incentive structure where those tasked with upholding property rights instead profit from their violation. As one land fraud insider revealed, “We’ve got our own police officers”—indicating that security personnel are not merely corrupted on a case-by-case basis but operate as integrated components of organized land theft networks.

The Documentary Fraud Machine

At the heart of Haiti’s institutionalized land theft is a sophisticated system for fabricating or manipulating property documentation. This system operates through multiple layers:

1. Creation of counterfeit titles: Officials within the DGI issue multiple “original” titles for the same property, creating artificial disputes.
2. Forgery of judicial orders: In the Tesse murder case, a suspect was released using a document with the forged signature of the judge in charge.
3. Exploitation of destroyed archives: When records burn or disappear, as happened in Les Cayes in 2010, officials use the information vacuum to “recreate” ownership histories that favor their clients.
4. Manipulation of inheritance claims: Distant “heirs” suddenly appear with seemingly valid documentation to contest ownership of valuable properties, particularly targeting absent owners in the diaspora.

This documentary fraud machine operates with industrial efficiency. According to sociologist Michèle Oriol, former Executive Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Land Use Planning, “Les Cayes is the jurisdiction with the most land disputes, mainly because the General Directorate of Taxes archives burned down in 2010”. The destruction of these archives created a perfect opportunity for fraudsters to rewrite ownership histories.

Modern Implications

The institutionalized theft of land in Haiti has devastating consequences that extend far beyond individual property rights. These impacts reverberate through Haiti’s economy, society, security, and political development:

Economic Stagnation

Haiti’s dysfunctional property system severely constrains economic development. With property rights insecure, landowners are reluctant to invest in improvements or productive activities. According to the World Bank, this uncertainty limits investment in agriculture, housing, and infrastructure. Businesses hesitate to expand, fearing that investments could be lost through contested land claims.

The economic costs extend to the state itself. With limited tax revenue from properly registered properties, Haiti’s government lacks resources for essential services. The formalization of land rights could potentially increase the nation’s tax base while providing citizens with assets that could be leveraged for credit and investment.

Forced Displacement

Land theft drives internal displacement and migration. Almost 195,000 Haitians were internally displaced by violence from January 2022 through July 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration. While this displacement has multiple causes, land conflicts and the violence they generate contribute significantly.

Families evicted through corrupt judicial processes often have nowhere to go, joining Haiti’s growing population of urban displaced persons. The vulnerability of these displaced communities makes them targets for further exploitation, creating cycles of dispossession that span generations.

Entrenched Corruption

The institutionalized theft of land normalizes corruption throughout Haiti’s governance system. When judges, prosecutors, police, notaries, and cadastral officials routinely participate in property fraud, they establish patterns of behavior that undermine all aspects of governance. As attorney Arnel Rémy observed, “There is a whole network behind this”.

This systemic corruption erodes public trust in institutions and creates parallel systems of authority. Citizens learn that formal rights mean little compared to connections and resources, undermining efforts to build rule of law and democratic accountability.

Accelerated Environmental Degradation

The insecurity of land tenure contributes to Haiti’s severe environmental challenges. When occupants fear they may lose their land at any time, they have little incentive for sustainable management practices. Short-term extraction of value—through charcoal production, intensive cultivation without fallowing, or other unsustainable practices—becomes rational in a context where long-term rights are uncertain.

This dynamic accelerates deforestation, soil erosion, and watershed degradation, creating environmental vulnerabilities that manifest in landslides, flooding, and reduced agricultural productivity. The environmental consequences of land insecurity thus create additional cycles of displacement and impoverishment.

Call to Awareness and Action

Addressing Haiti’s institutionalized land theft requires action at multiple levels, from community resistance to international policy change. Here are concrete steps different stakeholders can take:

For Haitian Communities and Civil Society:

1. Document and publicize land theft: Create community-based documentation systems to record legitimate ownership claims and instances of institutional abuses. Use social media, diaspora networks, and international connections to amplify these stories.
2. Build legal defense networks: Establish networks of honest legal professionals willing to defend victims of land theft, potentially through pro bono arrangements or solidarity financing.
3. Develop parallel verification systems: Create community-validated property records that can serve as counterweights to corrupted official documentation. While not legally binding, these can provide evidence of historical occupation and community recognition.
4. Protect witnesses and whistleblowers: Develop support systems for those who expose land theft networks, including safety planning, emergency relocation, and solidarity mechanisms.

For the Haitian Diaspora:

1. Create diaspora property protection alliances: Form networks to monitor and protect properties owned by diaspora members who cannot be physically present in Haiti.
2. Fund independent investigative journalism: Support journalists like Gary Tesse who risk their lives to expose institutional corruption around land theft.
3. Advocate for international accountability: Use political influence in countries with large Haitian populations to push for sanctions against officials involved in land theft and for conditionality in aid that addresses property rights abuses.
4. Invest in digital land registration initiatives: Support community-led efforts to digitize and secure property records, potentially using blockchain or other technologies that resist tampering.

For International Actors:

1. Reform aid approaches: Move beyond technical fixes to address the political economy of land theft, including the networks of officials who profit from property insecurity.
2. Support judicial accountability: Fund specialized units focused on investigating corruption in land administration, with adequate protection for judges and prosecutors.
3. Condition assistance on reforms: Make international support contingent on meaningful reforms to reduce institutional complicity in land theft, with specific benchmarks for progress.
4. Apply targeted sanctions: Implement travel bans and asset freezes on officials documented to be involved in systematic land theft, following Canada’s example in sanctioning corrupt figures like Gilbert Bigio.

Conclusion

Haiti’s land theft crisis is not a failure of governance but a perversion of it—institutions designed to protect property rights have been repurposed as instruments of dispossession. The judicial system, cadastral offices, security forces, and documentation processes work in concert to transfer land from legitimate owners to connected elites, all behind a facade of legality.

This institutionalized theft thrives in the shadows of bureaucratic complexity and violence against those who would expose it. Gary Tesse’s murder—his mutilated body returned by the waves to Haiti’s shore—represents the extreme risks faced by those who challenge this system. Yet his story also reveals the power of truth-telling, as his death has brought international attention to the land theft operations of figures like Ronald Richemond.

The path forward requires recognizing that Haiti’s land problems are not primarily technical but political—rooted in power imbalances that allow institutions to serve predatory interests rather than public good. Addressing these challenges demands not just better record-keeping or updated laws, but fundamental transformation of how institutions function and for whom.

For Haiti to realize its potential, the nation must reclaim its institutions from those who have turned them into instruments of theft. Only when judges rule based on law rather than bribes, when cadastral officials record property rather than fabricate it, and when security forces protect rights rather than violate them, can Haiti build a foundation for equitable development and true sovereignty.

The titles of deception must give way to documents of truth—not just on paper, but in the lived reality of a Haiti where institutions serve all citizens, not just those with power to corrupt them.

FAQ Section

1. How widespread is land theft through Haiti’s institutions? Land theft through institutional corruption is pervasive throughout Haiti. According to a 2019 study, only 40% of property ownerships hold legal titles, and just 5% of the national territory is officially recorded, creating widespread opportunities for fraud. The World Bank ranks Haiti 180th globally in property registration efficiency. 2. What role do judges and prosecutors play in facilitating land theft? Judges and prosecutors often serve as key enablers, issuing eviction orders without proper evidence, demanding portions of disputed properties as “fees” for favorable rulings, and using their authority to intimidate legitimate owners. Former Les Cayes prosecutor Ronald Richemond exemplifies this pattern, allegedly demanding “three-sixteenths” of properties in exchange for favorable rulings. 3. Why hasn’t Haiti’s cadastral system been modernized despite decades of international assistance? While often framed as a technical challenge, the persistent dysfunction in Haiti’s land registry system serves powerful interests. According to attorney Arnel Rémy, there are “fraudsters within the institution issuing multiple original property titles”. This manufactured confusion creates opportunities for theft that would be eliminated by a transparent, functional system. 4. How does land theft affect Haiti’s economic development? Insecure property rights severely constrain economic growth by discouraging investment in land improvements, limiting access to credit (as property cannot be reliably used as collateral), reducing agricultural productivity, and creating costly conflicts that drain resources. The World Bank identifies Haiti’s property registration inefficiency as a major barrier to investment. 5. What happens to those who attempt to expose or resist land theft? Those who challenge institutional land theft face severe risks, including intimidation, fabricated criminal charges, arbitrary detention, violence, and even death. Journalist Gary Tesse was murdered in October 2022 after reporting on prosecutor Richemond’s land theft operations, while shopkeeper Evens Bernavil faced false charges and had to hide for three months after filing a complaint against the same prosecutor. 6. How does Haiti’s diaspora factor into land theft dynamics? Diaspora property owners are particularly vulnerable to institutional land theft, as their absence makes it difficult to monitor their properties or respond quickly to fraudulent claims. Corrupt officials often target diaspora-owned land, knowing that distance and Haiti’s dysfunctional legal system create significant barriers to effective defense of property rights. 7. What is being done to address institutional corruption in Haiti’s land system? Recent efforts include the appointment of new officials, like Government Commissioner Elioth in Les Cayes, who has made fighting “land gangs” a priority. Canada has imposed sanctions on figures implicated in corruption, and some limited judicial reform initiatives are underway. However, addressing the deep institutional networks involved in land theft remains an enormous challenge given Haiti’s broader governance crisis.