The Haitian government heavily overstated the number of individuals killed by the 2010 earthquake, possibly to increase the amount of aid headed towards the island after the disaster. That’s according to a report by the federal government and acquired by the Associated Press.

How heavily overstated were the death toll figures? This heavily overstated:

The report, a copy of which was obtained Monday by The Associated Press, estimates that the death toll was between 46,000 and 85,000, far below the Haitian government’s official figure of 316,000.

In other words, we’re looking at a death toll of about 1/7 of that reported by the Haitian government. How did this happen? Well, the Haitian government was never truly interested in an accurate count:

Many people questioned the Haitian government’s death toll in the days after the quake. The officials released precise figures even as thousands of bodies were scooped up and dumped in mass graves in what seemed a haphazard fashion. Many more were left to decay in collapsed buildings. The government never publicly revealed its methodology for arriving at its statistics.

So basically the international community poured billions upon billions of dollars into Haiti, never questioning if the statistics provided were accurate. Haiti never made an effort to keep an accurate count of those killed, and in fact the Haitian government never disclosed its methodology behind the statistics.

And it’s not only the death toll that was exaggerated. Those still homeless and the amount of rubble following the quake? Both figures also exaggerated.

It turns out that about 900,000 were left homeless after the quake, but only 375,000 are still without permanent homes. The United Nations had claimed 1.5 million homeless and 680,000 still without permanent structure.

It was believed after the quake that about 20 million cubic meters of rubble was left to clean up. A new, revised total shows that there was less than half of that amount from the get-go.

So we were lied to about the death toll, lied to about those who were left homeless, and the real figure for destruction was far lower than reported. There are many questions that need to be answered.