Amid a deployment of security agents began this morning the first hearing for the preliminary trial of the network in the Medusa case led by the former Attorney General of the Republic, Jean Alain Rodríguez, for the alleged scam of 5 billion pesos to the state.
Judge Amauris Martínez, of the Third Court of Instruction of the National District, began the hearing at 11:00 in the morning with the presentation of the qualifications of the parties, called defendants, Public Ministry and the 63 people involved in the proceedings.
Since entering the courtroom, many of the defense attorneys argued that they had not been notified of the accusation, so they considered that an imminent postponement would occur.
“We have to postpone the hearing because we need time to get to know the file and make objections to the accusation”, considered the lawyer Miguel Valerio, representative of several social reasons (companies) that are included in the file.
The defense litigants argued that they needed at least 60 days to see the voluminous 12,000-page file.
The Public ministryrepresented in the process by the deputy attorneys Yeni Berenice Reynoso and Wilson Camacho, presented the court with 10 boxes of evidence that they will assert at trial.
The main accused, Jean Alain Rodríguez, was taken to the courtroom at 9:00 in the morning, sheltered by a police contingent.
In this preliminary stage, which is not a direct trial of the accused, but of the evidence, the judge will decide on the quality and request of the evidence contained in the accusation, and will determine against whom or who will open a trial or, for the On the contrary, which ones would benefit from a “no place”.
Many of those accused have collaborated with the Public Ministry, incriminating the former Attorney General of the Republic in the management of former President Danilo Medina.
The Public Ministry has presented 3,500 pieces of evidence to the court, with which it will try to establish the relationship that the defendants have with the facts attributed to them and the quality of the evidence, which must pass the filter so that there is an opening to trial.
According to the accusation, the 63 defendants supposedly illicitly appropriated more than RD$1,000 million, through the Plan for the Humanization of the Penitentiary System, implemented during Jean Alain’s term in the PGR.
In the case they appear as accused, in addition to Rodríguez, the former director of Information Technology and Communication of the Public Ministry, Javier Alejandro Forteza Ibarra; and the former administrative director, Jonathan Joel Rodríguez Imbert.
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Likewise, the engineer Jenny Marte Peña, former head of Projects and the former administrative deputy directors Alfredo Alexander Solano Augusto and Altagracia Guillén Calzado, as well as Rafael Antonio Mercedes Marte, former director of Accounting, and Miguel de Moya.
They were subsequently charged in the file Ramón Burgos Acosta, former director of the National System for Alternate Conflict Resolution (Sinarec); Félix Antonio Rosario, former director of the Office of Access to Public Information of the Public Ministry; Braulio Michael Batista, Jonathan Medina Reyes, Ysis Tapia, Mercedes Salcedo Disla, Carolina Pimentel Bonifacio and Francis Ramírez Moreno.
Likewise, Lisandro José Macarrulla Martínez, Reynaldo Santos de la Cruz, Daniel Enrique Feliz, Francisco Arturo Santos, Fausto Cáceres Salterio, Francisco Alberto Vásquez, Carlos Augusto Guzmán Oliver, Rafael Salvador Rasuk, Sean Hudson Dwiggins, Ricardo Antonio Carrasquero, José Antonio Santana Julián , Felipe Fernández de Castro and Ismael Elías de Jesús.
Operation Medusa began on June 28, 2021 with the arrest of Alain Rodríguez when he went to the Specialized Prosecution Office for Administrative Corruption (Pepca), to be questioned about the charges against him.
He still remains in prison.
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Although the court in charge of the file in which 63 defendants appear is the Third Court of Instruction of the National District, due to the large number of defendants, the hearing is held in the main room of the Court of Civil and Commercial Appeals, located in the old building of the Supreme Court of Justice, in the Center of the Heroes. The file consists of 12 thousand pages.
The main defendant in the file, former prosecutor Jean Alain Rodríguez, has been in prison for 409 days. Others who appear in the Medusa case are Jonnathan Joel Rodríguez Imbert, Alfredo Alexander Solano Augusto, Altagracia Guillén Calzado, Jenny Marte Peña, Javier Alejandro Forteza Ibarra, Rafael Antonio Mercede Marte, Miguel José Moya, Braulio Michael Batista Barias. Also Alejandro Martín Rosa Llanes, Ramón Lucrecio Burgos Acosta, and Johannatan Loanders Medina Reyes.
