Camacho: Guerrero, Peralta and Gonzalo set up a corrupt plot from the position of power

The Prosecution Director of the Public Ministry indicated that the defendants conspired to embezzle more than 19 billion pesos from the treasury. Santo Domingo.- Deputy Attorney Wilson Camacho stated this Friday that the case against Donald Guerrero, José Ramón Peralta, and Gonzalo Castillo unveils the plot of a case of administrative corruption in which influential officials joined forces to, taking advantage of their power within the bowels of power, extract billions of pesos from all taxpayers. The Director General of Prosecution of the Public Ministry recalled that the three former officials, along with the other individuals involved in the case, only in expropriations, embezzled more than 19 billion pesos from the treasury, which could have been allocated to essential services such as health at a time when the country was facing the Covid-19 pandemic. Camacho stated that the structure embezzled money in addition to debt payments to ministries, implemented a bribery scheme on gambling that must be regulated by the Ministry of Finance in strict adherence to the legal framework.

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He reported that in the corruption scheme implemented by the then officials to defraud the State, situations as unbelievable as the fact that an enlisted person from a military entity could withdraw up to one billion pesos in cash from the financial system were seen. He also highlighted that the structure retained up to 70% of what they said they had paid to third parties who, instigated in most cases by the officials who participated in the corruption scheme, were claiming payments from the State for old expropriations. Camacho indicated that, given the forcefulness and seriousness of the evidence, he trusts that the justice system will play its role, as will the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and that the court will send all the accused to trial, since it is an over-proven process, with some 1,278 pieces of evidence in which the whole society hopes that corruption will be punished without any hint of impunity prevailing.

The criminal process

After presenting its rebuttal conclusions to the defense’s arguments last Friday, the Public Ministry requested the court that all defendants be sent to trial for defrauding the Dominican State of more than RD$19 billion pesos from taxpayers.

The accused, who were arrested by the Public Ministry with the launch of Operation Calamar, were part of a structure that diverted the indicated millionaire sum through irregular payments for expropriations of land declared of public utility and bribes used to finance the 2020 electoral campaign.

In addition to the former ministers of Finance, Public Works and Administrative Affairs of the Presidency, Donald Guerrero Ortiz, Gonzalo Castillo and José Ramón Peralta, those charged in the administrative corruption case also include: Daniel Omar Caamaño, former Comptroller General of the Republic; Luis Miguel Piccirillo, former director of the State Sugar Council (CEA), and Claudio Silver Peña, former director of National Cadastre. Also, Óscar Chalas Guerrero and Julián Omar Fernández, former directors of Casinos and Gambling.