Risk Indicators
- FATF/EU Blacklist/Greylist (Higher Concern)
- Terrorism Financing (Medium Concern)
- US Dept of State INCSR
- Proliferation Financing
- Corruption
- Criminality
- Resilience & Governance
- Financial Transparency
- Offshore Finance Centres
- Sanctions
Background
Haiti’s history reflects a profound transformation from the French colony of Saint-Domingue to the world’s first country led by formerly enslaved people after independence in 1804, under figures including Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The legacy of forced labor, the indemnity imposed by France, foreign intervention, and the Duvalier and Aristide eras has continued to shape the country’s political and economic fragility. More recently, the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Ariel Henry’s disputed tenure, and the installation of a Transitional Presidential Council unfolded alongside escalating gang control and the absence of sitting elected officials since January 2023.
Repeated natural disasters have compounded these challenges, notably the 2010 earthquake near Port-au-Prince and the 2021 earthquake in the southern peninsula, leaving extensive loss of life and humanitarian need. Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and among the most unequal, while instability increasingly affects its relationship with the Dominican Republic through migration, border security, and illicit trafficking concerns. Its wider regional setting also includes Cuba’s extensive US sanctions and alleged circumvention networks, alongside more conventional crime and drug-trafficking pressures involving Jamaica and the Bahamas.
AML & Terrorist Financing
Haiti remains subject to FATF strategic-deficiency measures and faces persistent AML/CFT challenges amid political instability, gang violence, corruption, drug trafficking, and a strained justice system. Although UCREF, ULCC, BAFE, and BRH have taken steps to improve coordination, financial intelligence, and oversight, weaknesses remain in risk-based supervision, beneficial ownership information, reporting, investigations, prosecutions, and asset recovery. Terrorist-financing controls are especially underdeveloped, with limited risk assessment, guidance for NPOs and reporting entities, sanctions-list implementation, and proactive investigative capacity, while emerging concerns include unlicensed casinos, cross-border cash, and digital assets.
Sanctions
Haiti is required, as a UN member, to implement international measures that include a comprehensive arms embargo, targeted asset freezes, and travel bans, with oversight from a Panel of Experts and the 2653 Sanctions Committee. Additional actions by OFAC, the EU, UK, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and other authorities target gangs, corrupt officials, and destabilizing actors through mechanisms such as Foreign Terrorist Organization designations, Global Magnitsky sanctions, and country-specific regulations. No Haiti-enforced sanctions against other nations are identified, while weak governance, shell companies, intermediaries, informal financial channels, and Caribbean transit routes are highlighted as challenges to enforcement.
Criminality
Corruption and bribery remain pervasive obstacles in Haiti, with reported concerns spanning the legislature, judiciary, political parties, executive, media, and private sector while existing criminal laws are unevenly and rarely enforced. Criminal markets include trafficking in people, arms, drugs, counterfeit goods, fuel, and illicit financial activity, with armed gangs controlling parts of the country and the ULCC, Anti-Corruption Circuit, and CSCCA facing continuing challenges in curbing impunity and strengthening oversight.
Reports
Haiti’s expanding gang control, political instability, and weakened institutions are constraining counternarcotics and anti-trafficking efforts, with the HNP’s BLTS operating under severe resource pressures while cocaine and marijuana continue to move through the country. At the same time, displacement, missing documentation, cross-border migration, and gang recruitment are heightening risks for children and other vulnerable groups, even as agencies such as CONALD and the CNLTP struggle to respond amid widespread insecurity and alleged official complicity.
Industry/Product Sector Risk
Haiti’s financial and commercial landscape is largely cash-based and informal, with high-risk exposure concentrated in banking, remittance services, real estate, gaming, trade finance, transportation, and politically connected activity. Weak licensing, supervision, customer identification, beneficial-ownership transparency, and border controls create openings for proceeds linked to corruption, narcotics trafficking, smuggling, fraud, and trafficking to move through both formal and informal channels, while mobile money and other sectors continue to evolve. The central bank, the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation, and Haiti’s anti-corruption authorities are among the institutions relevant to understanding how these vulnerabilities are monitored across a diverse but unevenly regulated economy.
Economy & Investment Climate
Haiti’s economy combines significant potential in agriculture, apparel assembly, and a youthful workforce with prolonged contraction, sharply elevated inflation, disrupted production and trade, and heavy reliance on remittances. Although the Investment Code and the Center for Facilitation of Investments offer formal avenues and incentives for foreign participation, corruption, insecurity, weak infrastructure, limited finance, and institutional uncertainty continue to shape the operating environment.
Cryptocurrency Regulations
Cryptocurrency in Haiti occupies an ambiguous space: it is neither legal tender nor expressly prohibited, while the Bank of the Republic of Haiti and the Ministry of Economy and Finance have no dedicated framework for exchanges, taxation, token offerings, or virtual asset service providers. Haiti’s 2021 engagement with FATF and CFATF highlights efforts to address substantial AML/CFT deficiencies, but the unclear application of KYC, the Travel Rule, inspections, and investor protections leaves digital-asset activity subject to considerable uncertainty.
Get full access
The information on this page is a brief summary. Get access to EDD country reports, all risk category scores and customisable weightings for 245 jurisdictions.