The main defendant in the case is the former Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero Ortiz, but also included are former officials Emilio César Rivas Rodríguez, Director of National Assets; Claudio Silver Peña, National Director of Cadastre; Luis Miguel Piccirillo McCabe and Domingo Enrique Martínez Reyes of the State Sugar Council; Simón Lizardo Mézquita, administrator of BanResrevas; Luis Baldemiro Reyes Santos, Director of Budget; Daniel Omar de Jesús Caamaño Santana, Comptroller General of the Republic; Princea Alexandra García Medina and Aldo Antonio Gerbasi Fernández of the Directorate of Public Debt Recognition, among other officials and subordinates.
SANTO DOMINGO. -The Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption ( Pepca ) is investigating an alleged fraud involving embezzlement against the Dominican State valued at more than 17 billion pesos during the administration of President Danilo Medina.
The information is contained in the financial information authorization document for the investigation issued by the coordinating judge of the National District's Courts of Instruction, Kenya Romero Severino, which orders the Superintendencies of Banks, Securities, the DGII and Idecoop to provide a series of information required by the Pepca for the investigation of a total of 209 natural and legal persons (companies), according to a publication by Diario Libre.
According to the document, “the modus operandi consisted of fraudulent maneuvers carried out under the instructions of the Minister of Finance at that time, Donald Guerrero Ortiz, with the objective of embezzling RD$19,653,871,513.80 from the public treasury, for transactional agreements, of which we (the Pepca) have identified that they managed to embezzle RD$17,300,642,051.07 for operations related to expropriations of land in protected areas,” the document says.
It indicates that other operations that have been identified were “the simulation of the purchase and sale of land under the modality of administrative debts, whose common element in all the transactions or agreements signed between the parties, is related to credit assignment contracts for more than RD$10,500 million to people of their complete trust, who sometimes used shell companies, dissolving them immediately after obtaining their objective, constituting the criminal type of embezzlement,” it adds.
The main defendant in the case is the former Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero Ortiz, but also included are former officials Emilio César Rivas Rodríguez, Director of National Assets; Claudio Silver Peña, National Director of Cadastre; Luis Miguel Piccirillo McCabe and Domingo Enrique Martínez Reyes of the State Sugar Council; Simón Lizardo Mézquita, administrator of BanResrevas; Luis Baldemiro Reyes Santos, Director of Budget; Daniel Omar de Jesús Caamaño Santana, Comptroller General of the Republic; Princea Alexandra García Medina and Aldo Antonio Gerbasi Fernández of the Directorate of Public Debt Recognition, among other officials and subordinates.
How did the investigation begin?
The Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption Pepca ) initiated an investigation following a special investigation report presented by the Comptroller General of the Republic dated September 23, 2021, based on data and information extracted from the internal systems of the Comptroller General of the Republic and information certified by the Ministry of Finance, National Treasury, General Directorate of Internal Taxes, among other institutions.
“In the investigation carried out by the Comptroller General, multiple fraudulent payment releases to third parties were identified under the modality of alleged public debt for the expropriation of land for the sum of 14,100,000,000 (fourteen billion one hundred million pesos) for transactional agreements of which the report indicates that the sum of 12,540,449,339.27 (twelve billion five hundred forty million four hundred forty-nine thousand three hundred thirty-nine pesos) was paid in a period of six months, between January and July of the year 2020.
Moreover, during the investigation, the Pepca indicates that it has determined that the damage to public assets is much greater than that indicated in the special investigation report presented by the Comptroller General of the Republic and that they have not only used the method of land expropriation to get the State to disburse funds in favor of the corruption structure, but that it is a corruption network that uses different methods to circumvent regulatory controls and obtain the desired economic resources.”.
According to the document obtained by Diario Libre, so far, the alleged expropriated lands have been identified in different parts of the country: Higüey; specifically in the East National Park (Cotubanamá); Santo Domingo, one of the plots where the Las Américas International Airport (AILA) is located; the National District, on a plot located on the Malecón seafront; Santo Domingo West, within the land where the Merca Santo Domingo was built; and Cotuí, in the Sánchez Ramírez province.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the lands affected by the investigation, with a total value of 19,653,871,513.80 (nineteen billion six hundred fifty-three million eight hundred seventy-one thousand five hundred thirteen pesos), are the following:
According to the document, the investigation report carried out by the anti-fraud unit of the Comptroller General of the Republic indicates that in most cases, various inconsistencies were verified between the names of the people registered as the holders of the rights affected by the decrees and the names that appear in the documents presented by the claimants to support the payments, which were assumed to be typographical errors by the technical evaluators of the documents, without ensuring that said errors were rectified through the procedures established in the laws by the competent authorities, a situation that was also observed in the names and surnames of the public servants acting in the different administrative stages for the payment process.
The document also states that “the investigation has determined that Mr. Ramón Emilio Jiménez Collie (a) Mimilo, Mr. José Andrés Familia, Mr. Fernando Crisóstomo Herrera, Mr. Álvaro Jiménez Crisóstomo, Mr. Efrain Santiago Báez Fajardo, Mr. José Pablo Ortiz Giraldo, Mr. José Arturo Ureña, Mr. Juan Alexander Tapia Holguín, Mr. Pedro María de Altagracia Veras and Mr. Bernardo Rafael Ledesma are linked in the network of credit concessions where the same maneuvers were carried out in different institutions in a private manner.”.
Likewise, “the investigated Donald Guerrero created a non-governmental structure composed of the investigated Mimilo Jiménez, José Andrés Familia, Fernando Crisóstomo Herrera, Álvaro Jiménez Crisóstomo, Efrain Santiago Báez Fajardo, José Pablo Ortiz Giraldo, José Arturo Ureña, Juan Alexander Tapia Holguín, Pedro María de Altagracia Veras and Bernardo Rafael Ledesma, Ángel Lockward Mella, Ángel George Lockward Cruz, among others, to carry out irregular and illegal public debt processes through the Ministry of Finance and thereby embezzle the assets of the Dominican State.”.
Source: Diario Libre
