EUSTACHE et al. v. CITIBANK et al.  - Case No. 1:24-cv-02373 - U.S. District Court, Baltimore, Maryland
A Call for Justice in the Case of Haiti's Double Independence Debt

by Harold J. Eustache Sr. Esq. and Joseph Makhandal Champagne, Jr. Esq. 

Why We Filed This Historic Lawsuit
The First of Its Kind

For over two centuries, Haiti has borne the weight of a crushing and immoral financial burden—a so-called "Independence Debt" demanded by France and facilitated by global financial institutions. This debt, imposed under military threat and paid at the expense of generations of Haitian people, remains one of the most egregious examples of coerced economic extraction in history. Despite global conversations, historical commissions, and public acknowledgments, no one had ever filed a legal challenge anywhere. Until now. This lawsuit is the first of its kind. It is not about the wrongs of slavery or reparations for slavery. It is about restitution in law to recognize that the immense wealth that was transferred from the last several generations of Haitians to enrich French and Wall Street corporate coffers was not buried in the past. It lives on in the poverty, instability, deprivation, and underdevelopment that Haitian citizens experience today.

 

What We Are Asking For

We are not suing a government on behalf of the entire Haitian nation. We are suing private financial institutions—Citibank of the U.S. and Credit Industriel et Commercial (CIC) of France—for their unjust enrichment from an abusive debt they enforced, managed, collected and perpetuated for more than a century against our ancestors. They did so not to serve the people of Haiti, but to profit and plunder from the vulnerabilities of the first newly free Black nation in the world shortly after its exhaustive but victorious 12-year revolutionary war against France in the Haitian Revolution. Our claim is based on well-established and traditional legal principles of equity and restitution: those who benefit unjustly at the expense of others should return what they have taken.

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The Legal Hurdles We Face

We know the legal road is steep. But that is no reason to remain silent. "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." MLK.

Standing: Critics say we cannot sue because current generations were not alive when the original extraction occurred. But the effects do not die with a generation. If wealth from the original takers can be inherited, so can injury by the descendants of the original victims. The impact of that stolen wealth still ripples through Haiti’s communities, schools, environment, hospitals, and infrastructure. We believe the courts can and should recognize Haitian descendants’ right to seek justice on behalf of their ancestors and themselves, as they have in Jewish holocaust cases since World War II.

Statute of Limitations: Some say it's too late. We say the truth was hidden. These institutions concealed their involvement for decades. It wasn’t until the New York Times published its groundbreaking 2022 exposé that the full scope of their role became publicly documented. Under the law, when the wrong is concealed, the timeline for seeking justice shifts.

Jurisdiction: We filed in Maryland for practical reasons, knowing challenges would come. But a dismissal on jurisdiction doesn’t end the case — it only moves it. We are prepared to continue this fight in any court that will hear us.

Political Question: This is not a foreign policy issue. It is a civil lawsuit asking the court asking it to hold private actors accountable for the private vast wealth they wrongly and unlawfully extracted under the cloak of imperial force.
 

Why Now

Because no one else has. Because 200 years of silence is long enough. Because on April 17, 2025, the bicentennial of France’s original demand of a ransom for the enslavers, even the French government admitted this so-called debt was a grave injustice and historic abuse of power. Because the descendants of the victims have an inalienable right to seek redress from the successors of the takers who are still enjoying that ill-gotten wealth. We know that critics will come. That some will say we should have waited. That others will say we are asking for too little or too much. But we also know this: no progress was ever made by waiting for permission and, as Dr. King put it, “it does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle.”

We filed this case not out of convenience, but out of duty. We filed it because we are the children of those who once stood bravely alone against the greatest military powers on Earth and won. We filed it to say: we remember. We are not afraid. And we are not done, not “until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Stand with us. Share this story. Join the call for justice.