It is 23 years since "Baby Doc" Duvalier was forced out of power in Haiti, but a Swiss court will soon decide whether the kleptocratic dictator can get his hands on 7 million Swiss francs ($9.4 million) frozen in a Swiss bank account since 1986, while the country he and his father ruled for more than 30 years endured their grim legacy of poverty and political turmoil.

Haiti's Government has requested a "mutual legal assistance proceeding", asking the Swiss to confiscate the assets - and the long process should reach its final stage before Christmas in the Swiss Supreme Court.

"The aim for the Haitian Government is to say, 'Look, it doesn't pay in the end'," says Valentin Zellweger, deputy director of Switzerland's Directorate of Public International Law, who has been pursuing the case.

"We had excellent co-operation with the Haitian Government; it was this which allowed us to go as far as we did."

It hasn't been simple: the Duvalier family assets were squirrelled away in a vehicle called the Brouilly Foundation, with links to Liechtenstein and Panama, and Baby Doc and his relatives have fought hard to get their hands on the cash, most recently appealing to the Swiss Supreme Court.

"All these families tell us they are destitute and live in very difficult conditions. Strangely, they all have excellent lawyers," Zellweger says.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule within weeks on whether the funds can finally be released back into the hands of the Haitian people.

In theory, the Duvaliers could take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but even if they choose to do so, the Supreme Court judgment will exhaust the Swiss legal process, allowing the funds to be released immediately.

Adrian Fozzard, who heads the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (Star), a joint initiative between the United Nations and the World Bank, says Duvalier is one of a small but growing band of ex-leaders who are discovering that, even decades after they are forced from power, the fruits of their plunder can still be confiscated.

"The idea of going after the proceeds of corruption is relatively new, but there is a general sense that the tools are gradually being put in place."

Aided by the growing international focus on unmasking secretive tax havens since the financial crisis, Fozzard and his colleagues helped to put the issue of chasing down the proceeds of corruption on the agenda for world leaders at the recent G20 meeting.

Since April's London summit, tax havens have rushed to comply with new rules forcing them to hand over information to overseas authorities, but Fozzard and his team would also like to see tougher rules forcing them to co-operate with anti-corruption investigations in faraway countries.

In its early days, the main motivation for chasing down the ill-gotten gains of ex-dictators was to finance development projects in their ravaged countries.