Mass. District Court Tosses FCPA Case Over Bribes to Haitian Officials at Request of US

The Office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts dropped its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case against Richard Boncy, a businessman and former Haitian ambassador-at-large, and Joseph Baptiste, a Haitian-American businessman. Filing a motion to dismiss a few days before the case's second trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the U.S. said that given the court's earlier decision vacating past convictions and the loss of recordings potentially containing exculpatory information, the case should be tossed. Judge Allison Burroughs dismissed the case in a text-only order June 28 (U.S. v. Roger Richard Boncy, D. Mass. #17-10305).

Boncy and Baptiste were previously convicted of the FCPA charges. In June 2019, the two were found guilty of offering millions of dollars in bribes to Haitian government officials for an $84 million port project in northwest Haiti. Following the jury verdict, Burroughs granted both retrials due to the ineffectiveness of Baptiste's defense. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld the retrial motion.

In 2019 during the original case, Boncy and Baptiste previously tried to dismiss the case over the government's destruction of the recordings of two calls with an undercover FBI agent. The government acknowledged it destroyed the recordings, but the court ruled against the dismissal motion after finding it was a good-faith mistake and that there wasn't enough evidence to establish that the recordings were exculpatory. Most recently, the defendants renewed the motion to dismiss, this time over a disk that is alleged to have the recordings on it (see 2206220063).

The U.S. addressed the recordings in its motion to dismiss, telling the court that they are one of the reasons the case should be dropped. "In light of the Court’s Rule 33 decision vacating the prior convictions, which was affirmed on appeal, the loss of the December 19 recordings, and the belated disclosure of communications concerning the content of the December 19 recordings, the government seeks to exercise its discretion and dismiss the Superseding Indictment," the brief said. "As a result, the government is not seeking a retrial."