Taken from Diario Libre
SANTO DOMINGO.- In March 2020, former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez promoted before the Superior Council of the Public Ministry the approval of the use of funds from financial certificates for economic guarantees deposited in the Dominican Agricultural Bank for the purchase of a plot of land that would be used for the construction of 18 parking spaces for the National District Prosecutor's Office, a property that was overvalued by twelve million pesos (RD$12,000,000.00), resources with which he bought an apartment in the Naco neighborhood, according to the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Corruption (Pepca).
The plot of land that the Attorney General's Office acquired, in the Gascue sector, had been bought three months earlier by a "childhood friend" of Jean Alain Rodríguez, for the value of seven million pesos (RD$7,000,000.00), who resold it to the highest representative of the Public Ministry for nineteen million (RD$19,000,000.00).
In the accusation of Operation Meduca, whose main defendant is the former Attorney General, the Pepca states that the value paid by the Attorney General's Office for the land represented, “an increase in the cost of twelve million Dominican pesos (RD$12,000,000.00), which is equivalent to a capital gain of 271 percent, an impossible situation given that, in the short time between the first and last sale, nothing particular occurred that generated said irregular increase, since in the real estate sector it is estimated that properties increase approximately, at most, 15% annually, in the urban sector.
It describes that the plot of land, “8-REF-C, block 371, DC 01, registration 0100173770 in the National District”, had been acquired by Eric Fernando José Mejía Almonte, Jean Alain's “childhood friend”, from Mrs. María Vanessa Méndez Chávez for seven million and who later resold it to the Attorney General's Office, so Mejía Almonte received the “RD$19,000,000.00 through check No. 044950 from Banco de Reservas, which he later deposited into an account at Banco BHD, and gradually delivered approximately eleven million pesos (RD$11,000,000.00) in cash to the accused Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez, thus proving typical criminal actions such as fraud against the Dominican State, embezzlement, illicit enrichment and money laundering”.
He adds that the lot ultimately proved unsuitable for that purpose, as its shape and layout are not appropriate for parking, so much so that its current use is contrary to its intended purpose, in violation of the Resolution of the Superior Council of the Public Ministry, presided over by the former Attorney General of the Republic, the accused Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez, dated March 17, 2020. The property is located on the corner of Las Carreras and Bernardo Pichardo streets, in the Gazcue sector of the National District
In the indictment, which includes 41 accused individuals and 22 companies, the Pepca states that to support the purchase, Jean Alain Rodríguez and Jonnathan Joel Rodríguez Imbert, assigned to represent the Attorney General's Office (PGR), used "a property appraisal, carried out by the engineer Eddy Valeriano of Tasaciones Exactas SRL, which establishes that said property had a market value of nineteen million two hundred thousand Dominican pesos (RD$19,200,000.00), that it had the capacity for eighteen parking spaces, (...) From which it follows that each parking space would cost one million fifty thousand five hundred fifty pesos.".
The Public Prosecutor's Office accuses the former Attorney General of instructing Eric Fernando José Mejía Almonte to "use the approximately eleven million pesos (11,000,000.00) that he had embezzled from public funds to acquire, for the sum of one hundred seventy thousand US dollars (US$170,000.00), apartment 311 on the 11th floor of the Veneto IV Tower, in the National District, and to take one million pesos (RD$1,000,000.00) for expenses, with the indication that both the purchase of the property for the purposes of the parking lot of the Prosecutor's Office of the National District, and the purchase of the aforementioned apartment, should be carried out in his own name, that is, in the name of Eric Fernando José Mejía Almonte.".
With this commission, Mejía Almonte displayed "the false quality and lent the name as a fraudulent mechanism to disassociate the property from the accused Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez and hide its origin," the file details.
On May 24, 2022, Mejía Almonte and his wife Paola Michelle Vásquez Medina “voluntarily handed over (to the Public Ministry), the apartment Functional Unit 311 identified as 400422064419: 311, registration No. 0100285129, of the Torre Veneto IV condominium, located in the National District (Naco)”.
The return was made, Pepca insists, “because said property was acquired by Mr. Eric Fernando José Mejía, as a front man, since the true owner is the accused Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez, who acquired it fraudulently with money from the execution of the financial certificates of the economic guarantees deposited in the Dominican Agricultural Bank.”.
Currently, the apartment has a value of RD$12,703,000.00, the judicial body reports.
