Santo Domingo.– The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR), in coordination with Belgian authorities, executed 20 raids in the country as part of a transnational investigation into an alleged network dedicated to human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and money laundering.
Error en la traducción: the JSON object must be str, bytes or bytearray, not NoneTypeThe investigation began in June of this year following the arrest in Belgium of Ana Mercedes Encarnación Mejía, Juana de Jesús Holguín and others involved. During that operation, five women who were being held in Encarnación Mejía’s home were rescued.
According to the investigations, the main ringleader of the structure used Spain as a transit country to move the victims to Belgium and had already served a five-year sentence for the sexual exploitation of a relative.
The Belgian authorities established that the organization obtained significant economic benefits through sexual exploitation and that part of those resources were sent to the Dominican Republic to be incorporated into the financial system through real estate investments and other operations intended to hide the illicit origin of the money.
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The proceedings were coordinated by the General Directorate of Prosecution, with the support of the Directorate of International Legal Assistance and Human Rights, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, and the National Police’s Money Laundering Department, with the objective of collecting evidence to strengthen the criminal proceedings being developed in Belgium.
The 20 raids were carried out on properties located in Santo Domingo East, Santo Domingo West, the National District, and San Francisco de Macorís, Duarte province, linked to the alleged criminal structure.
The operations also involved agents from the police forces of Belgium and the Netherlands, accredited to collaborate in the investigations.
The Attorney General’s Office highlighted that these actions reflect the commitment of the administration led by Attorney General Yeni Berenice Reynoso in the fight against transnational organized crime.
Deputy Prosecutor Wilson Camacho stated that international cooperation is a fundamental tool for addressing crimes that transcend borders, such as human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and money laundering, and reiterated that the Public Ministry will continue to strengthen collaboration with foreign authorities to prosecute and bring to justice those who are part of these criminal networks.
