The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) keeps around 23 million dollars frozen from the bank accounts of the former president’s brother-in-law Danilo MedinaMaxi Montilla, who is being investigated along with other former officials of the electricity sector for an alleged fraud committed in the Electricity Distribution Companies (EDE) for around 20 billion pesos.
In recent weeks the businessman, who was a supplier to the electricity distributors, has been requested several times by the PGR in the EDE case.
Montilla is legally assisted by lawyers Joaquín Zapata, Edward Veras Vargas and Lilia Fernández León, who accompany him at all appointments to the PGR.
The interrogations are carried out by the director of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Ministry, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, and by a team of prosecutors who assist her.
They deposit an instance
On June 15, 2021, the Dominican State filed a complaint against 14 people accused of embezzling from the Dominican Corporation of State Electrical Companies (CDEEE) and the Electricity Distribution Companies of the North, South and East.
The embezzlement complaint was filed by the then president of the Unified Council of Electricity Distribution Companies, Andrés Astacio, against Rubén Jiménez Bichara, former vice president of the CDEEE and the former administrators of Edeeste, Luis Ernesto de León; from Edesur, Radhamés del Carmen Maríñez and from Edenorte, Julio César Correa.
Also against Juan Alexis Medina Sánchez, brother of former president Danilo Medina and Maxy Gerardo Montilla Sierra and Alexander Montilla Sierra, also brothers-in-law of the former Dominican president.
You can read: Frisan RD$600 MM and US$42 MM to Maxi Montilla
The list of people that the State indicates as authors of the alleged scam is completed by Messin Elías Márquez Sarraff, Domingo Antonio Santiago, Miguel Antonio Reyes Reyes, Peter Alexis Francisco Tejada, Dileisi de Jesús Rivera and Julián Esteban Suriel Suazo and Wacal Vernavel Méndez Pineda, the latter two also in prison for the Antipulpo case.
Complaint
The complaint filed by the State against 14 people and 25 companies linked to the past management in the electricity sector establishes that the fraudulent transactions executed by the “corporate and family network” against the State and the three electricity distribution companies involve a higher amount to RD$20,000 million.
Business
The complaint as a civil plaintiff of the Dominican State indicates that the businesses of the defendants Maxy Gerardo Montilla Sierra and Juan Alexis Medina Sánchez, brother-in-law and brother of the former president of the Republic, Danilo Medina, were not limited to selling products to distribution companies, but that, when for some reason one of their companies did not participate in public purchases, they used mechanisms of power and coercion to constrain the successful bidder of the contract, who was forced to buy the materials and equipment from their companies, at the price they set.
He adds that for these activities the two merchants close to the then president received considerable benefits and that Montilla Sierra obtained contracts with Edesur for about RD$1,275 million and US$41,600,000, which represents about RD$4,000 million, only through two of its companies.
a note
Imputation
The complaint states that, in the case of Edeeste, the corporate and family mafia formed fraudulently formalized contracts for 132 purchasing processes, which resulted in a volume of transactions amounting to RD$3,888,967,167.55 and S$42,874,425.18, for some RD$6,397,121,040.58, details the document.
