SANTO DOMINGO– “I must tell you that I am neither resigning nor requesting a leave of absence, nor has anyone from the government asked me to leave my post.” This was declared on Wednesday of this week by Mérido Torres de Jesús Espinal, director of the State Land Titling Technical Unit (UTECT), referring to his mention in Operation Calamar.
A day later, yesterday, the Director General of Ethics and Governmental Integrity, Milagros Ortiz Bosch, considered that the official "should request a leave of absence after being mentioned in the file that involves a group of former officials from the previous PLD administration.".
“The Ethics Directorate has publicly issued its recommendation, and we await your response. Now, given my age and gray hair, knowing the attitude this presidential office inevitably adopts, I would have recommended requesting a leave of absence. I'm used to saying what I feel and what I believe is valid, but I think the best course of action was to free an institution you believe in from any contamination other than total transparency,” the official stated.
Ortiz Bosch made these statements during the press conference on the results of the Summit for Democracy, in which he also denied that the corruption cases against former officials were motivated by political issues.
The head of the General Directorate of Ethics and Governmental Integrity (Digeig) also stated that the order of prosecution of corruption cases also depends on the seriousness of the accusations.
The mention of Mérido Torres
The file requesting coercive measures against defendants in the Calamar case cited the name of the director of UTECT and according to the document, Jesús Espinal received RD$32,065,992.00 from the former Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero, for the payment of some land that was supposedly his property.
However, the official called these accusations slanderous, stating that it was a smear campaign against him and that he would therefore not resign from his position or request a leave of absence.
“I must tell you that I am neither resigning nor am I going to ask for a leave of absence, nor has anyone from the government asked me to leave my post,” said Jesús Espinal during an interview.
He added: “There is no way that a campaign has been waged against us because I said at one point that I would aspire to the mayoralty of the municipality of Santo Domingo Este. That fact has driven many people crazy and turned them against me. This is a media campaign, and I will file legal complaints in due course,” he said.
“I don’t care about their position, I don’t care about their politics, honor is priceless,” he added, while indicating that he is preparing to take them to court.
Witness in Calamar received 500 million for his participation in expropriation payments
Businessman José Arturo Ureña Pérez, one of the witnesses for the Public Ministry in the Calamar case, admitted to having received 500 million pesos for his participation in the structure supposedly created in the Ministry of Finance for the payment for land expropriations.
He allegedly received these funds through bank transactions, according to his testimony in the interrogation conducted by the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca) and the Prosecution Directorate of the Prosecutor's Office, in the persons of its heads Wilson Camacho and Yeni Berenice Reynoso, respectively.
According to Ureña Pérez, the money was transferred to him by Fernando Crisóstomo, another of the witnesses for the Public Ministry in the request for coercive measures that he presented against the 20 detainees in Operation Calamar.
Among those arrested in this operation are several former officials of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), including the former Ministers of Public Works, Gonzalo Castillo; of Finance, Donald Guerrero and Administrative Minister of the Presidency, José Ramón Peralta.
The beginning
Ureña Pérez presents Crisóstomo, as do other witnesses described in the request for a sanction, as the person through whom the irregular payments were initiated, which, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, were based on incomplete files and/or false information.
He recounted that he learned of an operation involving payments for expropriations through a comment by Ramón Emilio Jiménez, who later told him that his contact was the Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero. And although he claims not to have been actively involved in selecting the files that supported the payments, he admits that he, Crisóstomo, and Jiménez were all part of the structure formed for collecting the funds.
Another of the alleged irregularities that were supposedly committed by the Ministry of Finance, in which Ureña Pérez also participated, was the collection of fees from lottery and betting shops and corner stores with slot machines.
These establishments were charged amounts that, initially, ranged from RD$3,000, according to the testimony he offered.
“But then that changed, because not all banks paid three thousand pesos, and it wasn't a fixed amount, and I didn't handle the details of that part.”.
In statements to Diario Libre, several legislators who own betting shops admitted to making the payments and complained about the impact these had on their businesses. They claim they had to pay millions of pesos monthly. In the 18-page interrogation, which included 62 questions, Ureña admitted that he was part of the structure that managed these payments and that he received approximately 38 million pesos for his participation. He stated that Jiménez delivered the money to him in cash at the beginning or end of the month, in Jiménez's office.
When asked if he had to contribute any of the money he received to political campaigns, Ureña Pérez asserted that he did not. However, he told investigators that Jiménez claimed he was handing out money for electoral purposes and that he had given it to Gonzalo Castillo. “I never accompanied him. He always gave more than we divided among ourselves, but I can’t specify the amount, because that wasn’t my area of expertise,” he maintained.
