Former Haiti director Roland van Hauwermeiren says media will be ‘blushing’ when they hear facts about claims of sexual misconduct

The former senior Oxfam official accused of being at the centre of a sexual misconduct ring while working in Haiti has hit back at the “lies and exaggerations” about his case.

In his first interview since being accused of hosting sex parties with prostitutes while working in the country in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Roland van Hauwermeiren claimed many would be “embarrassed” when he finally told his version of events.

“A lot of people, including the international media, will be blushing when they hear my version of the facts,” the 68-year-old told the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, which visited him at his apartment on the Belgian coast.

“There are things correctly described,” he said, without explicitly elaborating on what he felt was untrue. Van Hauwermeiren told the paper that he would respond further through a lawyer in due course.

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“But I’ve also read a lot of lies and exaggerations. Parties every week? Chic villas? Women paid with money from the organisation?” he asked.



“Now everything appears exaggerated and that hurts, especially because my family does not want to see me any more.”

“I don’t feel like reacting at all,” he added. “What I see appearing everywhere is hard to bear. It hurts. It is especially very bad that my family does not want to see me any more. But now I say too much again.”

Van Hauwermeiren made his comments as it emerged that the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) had temporarily suspended funding to a joint project with Oxfam while it examined whether claims made against van Hauwermeiren while he was working for another British agency in Liberia had been properly flagged up.

Announcing the move, the head of humanitarian aid at Sida, Susanne Mikhail Eldhagen, said the project, which assists 250,000 people in Iraq, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, would be suspended, conceding that beneficiaries would be affected.

The scandal over Oxfam and wider allegations of sexual exploitation came as the Catholic aid agency Caritas Belgium – which appears to have been van Hauwermeiren’s first employer after he left the Belgian army following a secondment to conduct humanitarian work – said its review of his time with the agency had revealed no complaints of wrongdoing.

“We interviewed all possible people who worked with him between 1995 and 1999. Nobody ever noticed anything wrong. On the contrary. We heard nothing but praise for his work,” said a spokesman.

Van Hauwermeiren resigned as Haiti country director for Oxfam before the end of the 2011 investigation into his use of prostitutes working in the earthquake-hit country.

Four members of Oxfam staff were dismissed and three, including van Hauwermeiren, left before the investigation had completed.