Shock, horror, sadness, sorrow, hopelessness, rage, indignation, fear… there are too many words to describe the emotions and feelings that surface every time we read a new headline from the voluminous file, released by the Public Prosecutor's Office, where the former Attorney General of the Republic, Jean Alain Rodríguez, is accused of leading the largest mafia network the country has ever seen, the Medusa.
Once again, the country has been shaken by the knowledge of the gigantic case, whose investigation yielded 12,200 pages with accounts that have left Dominicans stunned by the "chilling" details narrated by those involved in the criminal chain, details that came to light after the investigation carried out by the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca).
For centuries, the country has heard the "rumblings of corruption," but they were mere suspicions that, in most cases, were quickly swept away. Partisan politics obscured and dissolved the accusations, while the authorities in power turned a blind eye. This time, there are more than enough reasons to understand the causes of judicial ineffectiveness, since those responsible for establishing controls were the very protagonists of the story.
Pastors distributing spoiled food, bulk bribes, collections of apartments and villas, rigged bids, fictitious contracts to collect a percentage of the salary, overvaluations, excessive greed, fake accounts to spy on and discredit journalists, political campaigns paid for with pure bribes and a chilling litany of unimaginable stories, are contained in what is so far considered the largest corruption case carried out in the Dominican Republic.
“This is our largest indictment. It has a volume of twelve thousand two hundred pages and within these, more than three thousand five hundred pieces of evidence and among the evidence more than four hundred witnesses,” specified Wilson Camacho, head of the Pepca, when he offered details of the case file.
Construction companies, engineers, architects, cement companies, travel agencies, artists, influencers, journalists, the list is long and scandalous; the file includes 41 people and 22 companies; the Public Prosecutor's Office estimates that one billion dollars in bribes were paid, while the country's most basic needs such as health and education sleep the eternal sleep, waiting for those who care for them to improve.
Reading and seeing the scandals involving the astronomical sums stolen from the public treasury, I have asked myself more than once, how have we survived as a country? There is no doubt that we have a nation with incalculable riches, because if, despite so much embezzlement and misappropriation evidenced in the various cases processed during the current administration of the Attorney General's Office, we remain standing, it is definitely because, in addition to the protection of the Almighty, we have vast reserves.
It is disheartening that the New Victoria Humanization Plan, designed to improve and alleviate overcrowding in one of the country's largest and most populated prisons, had nothing to do with humanizing it. The details of the file presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office demonstrate that only created and implemented because it proved to be a lucrative opportunity to line the pockets of powerful conglomerates and a convenient project that the former Attorney General manipulated at will to negotiate deals and increase his bank accounts and those of his network of accomplices.
Surnames “untouchable” seen for the first time in the pages of newspapers, nevertheless fill us with hope for the work being done by the Attorney General of the Republic, Mirian German and her team led by Wilson Camacho and Yenny Berenice, a Public Ministry that many high-ranking officials will reject and want to remove from the map, given so much “boldness”.
We can only hope that the evidence is validated by the judges, who fully comply with the responsibility that the law requires of them. My greatest wish is that the corrupt, regardless of their surnames or positions, are stopped and their keys are thrown out.
