SANTO DOMINGO.- The legal team of the former Administrative Minister of the Presidency, Jose Ramon Peralta Fernández requested a no contest in favor of the accused considering that the Public Ministry did not provide any evidence that would criminally compromise him.
When presenting the conclusions before the judge of the Fourth Court of Instruction, Altagracia Ramírez, the lawyers Pedro Balbuena, Santiago Rodríguez and Emery Rodríguez base the request on the fact that there is no evidence to send it to a substantive trial.
They stated that the accusation is colored by political interests that they did not identify, and that the Public Ministry intends to support it based on previously fabricated testimony and supposedly irrelevant evidence that does not link Peralta Fernández.
Legal professionals stated during the preliminary hearing of the case that after more than four years of investigation “there is not a single piece of evidence that incriminates him, which we have dismantled through solid legal arguments.”
“After an exhaustive analysis of the file, it is clear that José Ramón Peralta Fernández does not appear in any of the evidence provided nor is he linked to any of the objective lines of investigation of the case, such as financial traces, audits or cross-communications,” they expressed.
They assured that the inclusion in the process responds only to contradictory testimony, without material support or corroboration.
During the hearing, the lawyers presented documentary evidence that exposes inconsistency in the statements of witness Bolívar Ventura, establishing that “in an interrogation on November 27, 2021, Ventura claimed to have delivered three specific checks, numbers 9401, 9414 and 9458 to Fernando Crisóstomo, Mimilo Jiménez and José Arturo Ureña.”
They added that, however, strangely, on December 9, 2022, he radically changed his version of the same financial instruments, alleging, this time, that they were delivered to Francisco Pagán to supposedly be destined for Donald Guerrero and Peralta Fernández.
At that point, he argued that said testimony has no probative value since it was fabricated “and, more importantly, because it was invalidated by the official documentation presented in court.”
