Three administrative corruption files submitted to the courts and attributed to the past government management, one with more than two years in court and another with 18 months, do not pass the first procedural stage against the more than 150 involved, which includes individuals and legal.
In the last 12 months, the operations processes anti octopus, Coral Y jellyfish, names of the voluminous cases of fraud against State resources and with which, according to the Public Ministry, more than 15,000 million of taxpayers’ money would have been defrauded, concentrate all the energies of 40 prosecutors and thirty other investigators of the Specialized Prosecutor for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca). In this 2022, that body did not submit an accusation of embezzlement, although at the inauguration of its administration, the Attorney General of the Republic, Miriam Germán, announced that there are some 500 ongoing investigations for theft of public property.
15,000
Millions of pesos is the amount with which the State would have been defrauded in the Antipulpo, Medusa and Coral cases.
Litigation is not stagnant, except that of jellyfish, whose main defendant is the former Attorney General of the Republic, Jean Alain Rodríguez and, so far, the most weighty with 62 individuals and companies subjected. The preliminary trial or trial of the evidence, the stage in which it is verified if the compromising data and documents were obtained legally and without violating the procedures, does not finish starting in Operation jellyfishin which its first hearing has been postponed, first for four months and, the last, for two more months, so that the defendants study the 12,275 pages of the accusation and more than 3,000 “evidence”.
“”The Judiciary has decided to apply the reasonable limit of preventive detention in an irrational manner””Head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Corruption
anti octopus
With Alexis and Carmen Magalys Medina Sánchez at the helm, who are brothers of former President Danilo Medina, it is the file that has already been in court for two years and the one that is most advanced in the preliminary stage. In addition to the Medina Sánchez, he involves another 25 people and 21 companies. Of all the defendants, only one is in pretrial detention and it was because he was declared in absentia on two occasions. Alexis and Carmen Magalys, along with the main defendants in this case, are under house arrest. It is expected that in the first days of January there will be a ruling on a substantive trial of the defendants or a rejection in their favor, rejecting the request by the Pepca accusation. That decision will be made by the young judge Deiby Timoteo Peguero, of the Seventh Investigating Court, a magistrate who is 35 years old.
Alexis Medina Sánchez, to whom several companies are attributed, is accused of leading the network of anti octopus and supply, irregularly, State institutions. The alleged plot that he directed is attributed to embezzling the State with more than RD$5,000 million.
Pepca accuses Carmen Magalys Medina Sánchez, as vice president of the Patrimonial Fund of Reformed Companies (Fonper) and together with the president of that entity, Fernando Rosa, also involved, of paying labor benefits amounting to RD$41,261,723. Also, to pay “bottles” and allow the hiring of companies linked to Alexis.
Operation jellyfish
Jean Alain Rodríguez will be detained on December 29 for 18 months in Najayo-Hombres along with three other of his most important collaborators in his management at the Attorney General’s Office (2016-2020).
Jean Alain is accused of defrauding the State out of more than RD$6 billion, for which, allegedly, he used a network, to which 41 people and 21 companies have been linked, one of which belongs to Lisandro José Macarrulla , son of the former Minister of the Presidency, Lisandro Macarrulla, who resigned from the important government position after the questions. The companies allegedly participated in irregular tenders to be selected, but, in exchange, they had to pay 20 percent of the contracts received to the alleged network.
Jean Alain “arrived in public office on August 16, 2012 (2012) with the aim of pursuing an expensive political career, using multiple criminal actions, for which he needed the help of several people”, first as director of the Center Export and Investment of the Dominican Republic (CEI-RD) and game in the Attorney General’s Office, says the MP.
According to Pepca, with the illicit money, Jean Alain acquired a tourist villa in Bahía Chavón, with an extension of 2,192.45 square meters, and a plot of 3,366 meters in the exclusive Vista Lagos project. He accuses the former official of paying, after acquiring the luxurious villa, to an engineer more than RD$12 million for its remodeling with state money.
Police and military in Coral This alleged network, also with 30 accused persons, as well as 18 companies, is part of the extensive persecutions that the Public Ministry has continued in this year 2022 and whose process began its preliminary stage on December 9.
To this extensive group, made up of high-ranking Police and military officers from different military institutions, baptized as Coral Y Coral 5G, was supposedly commanded by the former head of the Presidential Security Corps (Cusep), Major General Adán Cáceres Silvestre, and the director of the Specialized Tourist Security Corps (Cestur), former FARD general, Juan Carlos Robiou. The latter and also other senior officials, such as Julio Camilo de los Santos Viola and José Manuel Rosario Pirón, remain in pretrial detention. Adán Cáceres, Rossy Guzmán and Colonel Rafael Núñez de Aza, the main defendants in Coral, their pre-trial detention was changed to home. In Coral Y Coral 5g, the fraud to the State would have amounted to 4,500 million. Another case of corruption is Operation 13, led, according to the MP, by the former administrator of the Lottery, Luis Maisichell Dicent, who began serving house arrest this week after changing his coercion. This case, which involves a fraud of RD$500 million, is already in trial and there are eleven defendants.
The rulings that varied the preventive detention due to other coercive measures in the four corruption cases, due to the expiration of the maximum time required by law, raised questions about those guarantees for those defendants and that for many ordinary citizens do not exist. The most “acid” criticism against the judges came from the Public Ministry when Alexis Medina and three other defendants were favored in Operation Medusa; Adán Cáceres Silvestre, from Coral, and Luis Maisichell Dicent, from Operación 13. “The Judiciary (PJ) has decided to irrationally apply the reasonable limit of preventive detention,” said the head of Pepca, Wilson Camacho. PJ himself revealed, in this month of December, that 1,500 inmates are behind bars for not being able to pay bail.
