Jean-Claude Duvalier could have gone on living in obscurity if he had chosen to remain in France. Until he turned up in Port-au-Prince on the weekend, the exiled former Haitian dictator lived a low-key life in a modest borrowed apartment in Paris and was rarely spotted in public. Many Haitians in Paris say they would have been content to let him stay that way.
"For most of us, the page had been turned," said Macendi Toupuissant, president of the Paris-based Federation of Haitian Associations. "People barely talked about him any more, and he could walk around and no one would recognize him. It's only now that a lot of people are rediscovering his face."
Mr. Toupuissant said he and other Haitians were stunned to learn that Mr. Duvalier had returned to his homeland on Sunday night. The former dictator is now being sequestered in a private residence in Haiti, under investigation for corruption, misuse of public funds and crimes against humanity. His lawyers say he plans to stay in the country to prove his innocence.
Mr. Duvalier slipped into relative anonymity about a decade ago, after 15 years of extravagant living on the French Riviera and in various chateaux. He arrived in France on Feb. 7, 1986, in a U.S. Air Force jet after a popular revolt forced him out of Haiti. The French government initially offered to let him stay for a week while it looked for another country willing to take him in. When no one accepted him, France was forced to let him take up residence.
Haitian and U.S. officials said Mr. Duvalier had embezzled at least $500-million during his last decade of rule. In France, he enjoyed a lavish existence that lived up to those reports. He was first hosted in a villa in the hills above Cannes, owned by the nephew of Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. He drove a BMW and a Ferrari Testarossa and his wife at the time, Michele Bennett, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Givenchy clothing and expensive jewellery. They owned a chateau outside Paris and two apartments in the city.
But he appeared to run short of cash after his wife divorced him, taking half his fortune with her. Looking for a new source of funds, he sold his chateau for about a quarter of the purchase price. In 1995, he was taken into custody after staying for weeks without paying the charges on a $78-a-night hotel. In 2002, after years of proceedings against him, the Swiss government seized more than $7-million that he had stashed in the Swiss bank UBS.
Although France has allowed Mr. Duvalier to stay, he has never obtained the legal right to do so. He applied for French citizenship, and although he met the requirements, the French Interior Ministry sent the application back, asking for more details.
He eventually moved to Paris with his French-born companion, Véronique Roy, a public-relations representative. He told the Wall Street Journal in 2003 that reports of his wealth were exaggerated and that he had spent all his money on his children and for school expenses. He said he and Ms. Roy shared a one-bedroom apartment belonging to a friend, who paid the $1,000-a-month rent, and that they were living off donations.
Mr. Duvalier slipped out of public consciousness in 2000, after activists abandoned attempts to have him charged in France for crimes against humanity. Mr. Toupuissant said the former dictator was occasionally spotted in a restaurant or café in Paris and sometimes held meetings with supporters, many of them taxi drivers. Ms. Roy travelled to New York and Port-au-Prince on his behalf to try to organize financial support for them and for an eventual return to power in Haiti.
Special to The Globe and Mail