The head of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca), Mirna Ortiz, urged this Wednesday the defense of Gonzalo Castillo, accused in the Calamar Case, to “not eat cravings.”
Ortiz clarified that the Public Ministry has not yet initiated the formal reply to said defendant, which will take place at the next hearing set for Wednesday.
This statement comes in response to Castillo’s lawyers, who assured that the case will not prosper due to “insufficient evidence”, even stating that the file is “shielded with cotton” and that it will not reach a substantive trial.
Evidence of irregular payments
Judge Ortiz assured that the Public Ministry will continue to demonstrate how the network operated. “We have proven how the Ministry of Finance, the group led by former official Donald Guerrero, paid deceased people or people without legal status.
“More than 65% of what was supposedly owed to creditors was delivered to a structure, directed in part by Ángel Lockward,” he said.
Given this, Pepca posed a rhetorical question to the court: “Who who feels truly deserving of a right donates to those who have done nothing more than 65% of what they believe is theirs?” According to Ortiz, this shows that the only objective of the structure was to obtain public money quickly through fraudulent maneuvers.
Continuation of the trial
Mirna Ortiz offered these statements as she left the Fourth Investigative Court of the National District, after Judge Altagracia Ramírez postponed the preliminary hearing.
In the Calamar Case, former ministers Donald Guerrero, José Ramón Peralta and Gonzalo Castillo appear as the main people involved. Also named are: Daniel Omar Caamaño, former Comptroller General, Luis Miguel Piccirillo, former director of the CEA, Claudio Silver Peña, former director of the National Cadastre, Óscar Chalas and Julián Omar Fernández, former directors of Casinos and Games of Chance.
According to the prosecuting body, those involved would have diverted more than RD$19,000 million through irregular payments for land expropriations and alleged bribes to finance the 2020 electoral campaign.
