Santo Domingo.- The civic movement Participación Ciudadana (PC), Dominican chapter of Transparency International (TI), called this Monday to prevent people and resources from drug trafficking from entering the local economy and political system.
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Through a statement, the Dominican chapter of TI considered it “urgent that the parties, groupings and political movements strengthen the controls in their affiliation and reception mechanisms of private, direct and indirect financing, to avoid the affectation of the Dominican party system”. Referring to the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), in power since 2020, it was pointed out that although it has issued an official statement disassociating itself from illicit activities, “it has a share of responsibility in allowing access to its ranks and/or the direct and indirect financing of its political-electoral activities, for which it must take drastic measures to avoid situations as scandalous as the one it is suffering today.” The PRM underlined last Thursday “its firm, categorical and unwavering position against any manifestation linked to drug trafficking”, after several cases of leaders of that organization related to drug trafficking. The note was published two days after the National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD) confirmed that it is collaborating with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, in English) in an investigation against the businessman Fabio Augusto Jorge-Puras, who until May 23rd served as honorary advisor for the promotion and development of free trade zones in the Dominican Republic. Jorge-Puras is also treasurer of the professional baseball team Águilas Cibaeñas, which on Wednesday reported that he took a leave of absence from his position “as a result of the content disclosed”. The case of Jorge-Puras is added to that of former PRM deputy Rosa Amalia Pilarte, who entered a prison in September of this year after being sentenced to 5 years in prison for money laundering of resources from drug trafficking in May 2024, when she was still serving as a congresswoman. In April 2024, the Southern District Court of Florida sentenced former deputy Miguel Gutiérrez to 16 years in prison for drug trafficking. He was arrested in Miami in May 2021, just one year after being sworn in as a congressman for the PRM. And in May of this year, the mayor Edickson Herrera Silvestre, also of the PRM, surrendered to the United States authorities after being accused in a Florida court of belonging to an international cocaine trafficking network. In many cases, according to PC, “the suspicious activities on the part of those investigated or convicted today, were part of the vox populi, or public rumor, in the communities and circles in which they operated, which should have been known to their local leaders”. The cases, moreover, “have generated justified concerns” in Dominican society about the effectiveness of the State’s control mechanisms.
