President Jovenel Moise on Wednesday denied allegations that he was at the center of an embezzlement scheme spanning the last decade.
"I'm looking you in the eye today to say: your president, whom you voted for, is not guilty of corruption," Moise said.
"The people who mishandled and misused state funds will be brought to justice in a fair, equitable trial without political persecution," he added.
The judges of Haiti's High Court of Auditors said in a voluminous report at the end of May that Moise was at the center of an embezzlement scheme that siphoned off Venezuelan aid money intended for road repairs, laying out what they said was a litany of examples of corruption and mismanagement.
The magistrates said they discovered, for example, that in 2014 Haitian authorities signed contracts with two different companies (Agritrans and Betexs) for the same road-repair project.
The two turned out to have the same tax registration number and the same personnel.
"To those who think it's alright to criticize the company I led before being president, before being a candidate, I say that justice is doing its work.
The business is there and all the paperwork exists," Moise responded Wednesday.