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BERN, Switzerland: The Swiss government is ready to release 7 million Swiss francs ($6 million) seized from bank accounts linked to Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier — but not back to his family.
The Duvalier family failed to prove that the money is of legitimate origin and are therefore not entitled to the assets, the Federal Office of Justice said Thursday.
The family has 30 days to appeal the decision to Switzerland's Federal Criminal Tribunal. If there is no appeal or if the tribunal upholds the government's decision as expected, the money will be released.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry said in that case it will select which aid organizations in Haiti would receive the money. The assets "are to be used for social or humanitarian projects to benefit the Haitian population," the justice office said.
Officials with Haiti's foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Thursday.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Many in Haiti consider that money stolen from public funds before Duvalier was ousted in 1986. <span style="font-style: italic">He has always denied that</span>.</span>
The money, which has been frozen since 2002, is in accounts in the names of Duvalier, who is believed to be living in exile in France, and members of his family.
Folco Galli, spokesman of the Federal Office of Justice, said the amount of the assets has always been around 7 million Swiss francs.
But "since the assets were blocked, nothing has been released," he told The AP. "That's all the money there is in Switzerland linked to Duvalier."
Swiss aid organizations said Haiti urgently needs the money to bring food and drinking water to hundreds of thousands suffering from the impact of four tropical storms and hurricanes that battered the impoverished Caribbean nation last year.
Switzerland has traditionally been a favorite location for dictators' money because of its banking secrecy rules. But reforms over the past two decades have made it harder to hide money in Switzerland and the country has become a world leader in returning such cash.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Switzerland has returned virtually all of the roughly $730 million in Swiss accounts linked to the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha back to his West African nation.</span>
