He Public ministrythrough the Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca), attributes to the former officials detained in the framework of Operation Squid, having bribed and extorted to entrepreneurs in order to obtain financing for the bells Policies of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD).
In the operation, carried out between Saturday night and last Sunday, some 19 people were arrested, including former ministers donald guerrero(Tax authorities), Jose Ramon Peralta (Administrative of the Presidency) and Gonzalo Castillo (Public Works), as well as several other former officials. There were also 40 raids.
According to the story that Pepca makes to justify the raids, those indicated above formed a corruption structure that collected millions of pesos in cash and mobilized them in official and armored vehicles and whose purpose was to finance, first the candidacy of Gonzalo Castillowithin the PLD, as well as his candidacy for the Presidency in 2020.
This is stated in the search request that he made on February 17 before the Coordination of the Investigating Courts of the National District, which was authorized on March 8, by Judge Kenya Romero.
To support the request, Pepca, under the signature of its owner, Wilson Camacho, describes that in 2019, before the PLD primary elections, the then President of the Republic, Danilo Medina, called a meeting in his office in the National Palace, with several high-level members of his team. He specifically cites Donald Guerrero, José Ramón Peralta, Simón Lizardo and Francisco Pagán, among other officials. The ex-president would have instructed them to find money for the bells 2019 policies.
It points out that, after that meeting, Peralta asked the director of the Office of State Works Supervising Engineers (Oisoe), Francisco Pagán, to summon engineer Bolívar Ventura, to whom, at that time, the State owed money, to his office in the National Palace.
He goes on to say that Pagán, the first former PLD official convicted in the corruption case known as Antipulpo, thanks to an agreement reached with the Public ministry, took Ventura to the National Palace, where Peralta allegedly told him that he should make contributions to the campaign in exchange for paying his debts. These payments would be coordinated by the Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero.
“The investigated Donald Guerrero, José Ramón Peralta and Gonzalo Castillo, together with others to whom this preliminary accusation refers, join forces to distract RD$527,694,838.00 from the State. To achieve this, they get the investigated Víctor Encarnación, technical director of the Oisoe, to make false volumes of works, even closed ones, that had been carried out by the companies of Bolívar Ventura. These false quantifications, as this investigation has proven, constitute a scam against the Dominican State”, says Pepca.
It adds that they have evidence that these operations were carried out in 2019, but that most of the documentation was dated 2018, in order to justify the payment as public debt, since, under this modality, payments could not be accepted in the same year. Of the debt.
The Reserves: petty cash
According to Pepca, the corruption structure used the Banco de Reservas as a kind of petty cash, from where cash was withdrawn that was later delivered to Gonzalo Castillo.
It indicates that Guerrero and Peralta requested tens of millions from the State contractor Bolívar Ventura, who would have explained to them the impossibility of moving those amounts in cash. Thus, it is arranged to contact the administrator of the Banco de Reservas Simón Lizardo, who, in turn, delegates assistance to the Comptroller of the Banco de Reservas, Andrés Guerrero. That would be the beginning of what Pepca defines as “the largest laundering operation committed in the shortest time, to date, to the detriment of the heritage of the Dominican State.”
It maintains that “the criminal corruption structure recurrently used the bank branch that obeyed the private interests of the criminal organization, being the Collection Center of the Banco de Reservas, ID 45232, located on Av. Jiménez Moya, where… Mimilo Jiménez’s driver, Mr. Juan Alexander Tapia Holguín, appeared to withdraw the funds.”
The search request indicates that “the defendant Andrés Guerrero proceeded to send an armored truck from the Banco de Reservas, from the bank branch indicated above to the parking lot of the office of Mimilo Jiménez, located at Av. Max Henríquez Ureña, corner Winston Churchill , In Tempo tower, usually around 6:00 PM, with the money available as a result of bank transfers authorized by the Ministry of Finance and, subsequently, taken to the commercial office of the investigated Gonzalo Castillo, located in the Gampsa Building IV, 7th floor, on José López street, between Luis Padilla and Amelia Francasci streets, DN, Santo Domingo, National District, or in a place called La Casita, located on Ceiba street no. 102, helios corner, in the Bella Vista sector…”.
La Pepca points out that former Minister Donald Guerrero used a non-governmental structure made up of Mimilo Jiménez, Fernando Crisóstomo, José Arturo Ureña, José Pablo Ortiz Giraldo, to carry out illegal charges through the Directorate of Casino and Games of Chance, from banks sports and lotteries that operated illegally, and for the use of slot machines in places not permitted by law, such as grocery stores. “The sports bench, lottery and slot machine project generated millions in sums, for this concept an average of 22,000,000.00 pesos came in per month for the benefit of the corruption structure led by Donald Guerrero and to the detriment of the Dominican State.”
In bags and suitcases
In addition to the false volumes, the structure that Pepca describes also used administrative debts as a form of profit, both personal and to finance bellsthrough land expropriation files.
It was, he details, files of expropriations in National Assets, the State Sugar Council and the Dominican Agrarian Institute, which totaled an amount of RD$31,147,053,422.15.
The Public Ministry assures that Gonzalo Castillo received 3,957 million pesos to finance his campaign and that, in most cases, he received it personally, from Jiménez.
“mimilo jimenez delivered three thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven million (DOP$3,957,000,000.00) directly to the accused, Gonzalo Castillo, who received them in cash in bags and travel suitcases, confirming his participation in the corruption structure where public funds were obtained fraudulently for. .. invest them in bells policies and for personal use and thereby incur in money laundering”.
It indicates that “the indicated item from fraudulent expropriation processes destined to the illicit financing of bells of the investigated Gonzalo Castillo and for money laundering operations from acts of corruption, through which money laundering was carried out, it was known by the code name “Official Party” and represented 30% of the income of the expropriation processes that were carried out fraudulently in the Ministry of Finance”.
They ask for 18 months in prison and a complex case
He Public ministry requested this Monday night 18 months of preventive detention as a measure of coercion before the Judicial Office of Permanent Attention Services of the National District against 20 indicated in the alleged corruption network dismantled through Operation Squid.
The commission, headed by Mirna Ortiz, Litigation Coordinator of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca), introduced four containers or plastic boxes with the documentation into the Ciudad Nueva Palace of Justice building.
“This process has been developed with an investigation that has assumed high international standards in everything that has been the collection of evidence,” Ortiz expressed.
He said the case, of more than 3,000 pages, contains some 1,200 documentary evidence. He assured that the arrests and investigations are just beginning.
