Santo Domingo.-Deputies of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) went dressed in black this Tuesday to the Congress National because, according to what they denounce, “the democracy Dominican is in mourning.
Wearing black suits and even shirts and ties of that color, the legislators show their discontent with the arrests led by the Public Ministry in the so-called operation Squid, which involves leaders of the purple party.
«We come here today dressed in black because, precisely in black, the democracy of our country,” explained Rafael Antonio Abel Lora, one of the deputies who protested yesterday in front of the Ciudad Nueva Palace of Justice before the arrests of his colleagues.
On her side, legislator Rudy Méndez (Ñiñín), who also participated in the demonstration and was injured, said that this is not the treatment that an impartial justice should give, referring to the Public Ministry.
The peledeista congressmen ask that President Luis Abinader also be investigated.
Yesterday, dozens of people with PLD flags and legislators from the purple party tried to force their way into the Ciudad Palace of Justice, in whose preventive jail former ministers Donald Guerrero, Gonzalo Castillo and José Ramón Peralta, linked to to acts of corruption.
This situation, in which several people were injured, including judicial police and congressmen, paralyzed the work of all the courts.
Later at night, the Special Prosecutor for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca) requested the imposition of 18 months of preventive detention against those arrested in the Squid operation, accused of being part of a corruption network that distracted the State Dominican more than 19 billion pesos.
In the document, deposited with the Office of Permanent Attention of the National District, it also requests that the case be declared of complex processing.
“A process that has been developed with an investigation that has assumed high international standards,” said Pepca’s Litigation Coordinator, Mirna Ortiz,
Regarding the request, Ortiz indicated that the Public Ministry “understands that it is the measure that this case entails, according to the seriousness of the accusations, the seriousness of the same and the evidence file that we have deposited.”
He explained that the file consists of “more than 1,200 elements of evidence deposited, a measure of coercion of more than three thousand pages that involves the theft of money from the State for more than 17 billion pesos” in expropriations, which added to some 2,100 million in administrative debt total more than 19 billion.
Ortiz pointed out that the Public Ministry is ready to know the measure when the court sets the hearing.
The litigant specified that this investigation is just beginning and that as it progresses, other arrests may take place.
In the operation, carried out last Saturday, 40 raids were carried out distributed in the National District, Santo Domingo province, San Pedro de Macorís and La Romana, achieving the arrest of 20 people.
In carrying out these searches and arrests, 40 prosecutors, dozens of technicians from different investigative units, 300 members of the National Police and a large administrative support team participated.
Among those arrested are the former Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero; former administrative minister of the presidency, José Ramón Peralta; former Minister of Public Works Gonzalo Castillo; former Comptroller General of the Republic, Daniel Omar Caamaño; the former director of the State Sugar Council (CEA), Luis Miguel Piccirilo; former director of the National Cadastre, Claudio Silver Peña, the economist Ángel Lockward and the former directors of Casinos and Gambling, Oscar Chalas Guerrero and Julián Omar Fernández.
Likewise, Roberto Santiago Moquete, Agustín Mejía Ávila, Emir Fernández de Paola, Marcial Reyes, Alejandro Constanzo, Yahaira Brito Encarnación, Ana Linda Fernández, Ángel Lockward, Aldo Antonio Gerbasi, Ramón David Hernández, Víctor Matías Encarnación and Rafael Parmenio Rodríguez Encarnación are under arrest. .
The preliminary accusation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office against those arrested includes conduct typified in article 146 of the Constitution of the Republic, as well as articles 123, 166, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 265, 266, and 405 of the Penal Code.
Also, violations of Laws 448-06 and 311-14, in addition to Law 155-17, against Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism and Law 33-18, on Political Parties, Groups and Movements.
