SANTO DOMINGO – The Fourth Investigating Court of the National District ratified the preventive detention of three accused of the network of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation dismantled last year with Operation Cattleya.
Prosecutor Eduardo Velázquez, from the General Directorate of Persecution of the Public Ministry, highlighted the decision adopted by the court during the mandatory review of the measure of coercion against the accused, establishing: “Today the Fourth Investigating Court, presided over by Judge Altagracia Ramírez, the defendants of Operation Cattleya, José Miguel Michel Gurdis (Michel), Angélica Johanna Quintero and Daniel Enrique Inirio Abreu, were kept in preventive detention, because the budgets they presented at the hearing They were the same as those presented on November 29 to said judge.
Velázquez represented the Public Ministry together with prosecutor Ginna Matías, from the Special Prosecutor’s Office against the Smuggling of Migrants and Human Trafficking (PETT).
The three defendants were arrested after Operation Cattleya was launched in August of last year, directed by the General Directorate of Persecution of the Public Ministry and the PETT, directed by the assistant attorney Yeni Berenice Reynoso and the court attorney Yoanna Bejarán.
The case is also being followed against Cristina Virginia González Hernández, María Castillo Vargas, Robert Lee Eleuterio Paniagua Díaz, José Alberto Soriano Rosario (Surgeon) and Dionicio Mieses de la Cruz (Dionis).
In addition, against Louis Marie Nephtalie, Engel Nefthali Vargas Soto (Ángel), Oliver Arnaud Lewinski and/or Timothy William Case Renee, Braulio Manuel Lugo, Marie Fokina Achille (Fior, Flor or Flores), Carlos Jhonatan Walwyn Campusano Díaz (Carlos), Melvin José Valentín Peguero, Zafiro Nataly Sánchez González, Oscar Wicene and Alejandro Arturo Batista Bustamante (the Cat).
The process also involves the Caribe and Oscar hotels, in the Gascue sector, in the National District, and Coco Real, in Bávaro, Punta Cana, La Altagracia province.
The Public Ministry launched Operation Cattleya on Thursday, August 4, 2022, with dozens of raids in the National District and Bávaro, the product of an extensive investigation that began nine months ago and with which it dismantled transnational networks dedicated to trafficking in persons with in order to sexually exploit them and with which he rescued more than 80 female victims from South America.
In the course of the investigation, the Public Ministry has established that the victims were subjected to sexual exploitation, by offering them for different rates for the economic benefit of the criminal organization.
