Santo Domingo.- The National Convergence against the Theft of Social Security, along with the Primero Justicia Foundation, went this Wednesday to the Attorney General’s Office to request the judicial submission and immediate arrest of several people who are identified as key actors in the alleged embezzlement and money laundering to the detriment of ARS Senasa, estimated at more than RD$43,000 million.
The complaint filed with the Attorney General’s Office (
PGR), by lawyer Miguel Surun Hernández, points to Edgar Batista Carrasco, former IT manager of Senasa and current director of the Government Office of Information and Communication Technologies (OGTIC), who is accused of being the main person responsible for the alteration of the entity’s computer system, which would have allowed the creation of a double accounting system to embezzle public funds.
Furthermore, they requested the arrest of Lowell Fernández Wimpel, representative of the company Pharmacard, through which —according to the complaint— around RD$2.3 billion had been laundered. Fernández is the brother of the Superintendent of Banks, Alejandro Fernández, whom they also asked to investigate for his alleged passivity in the face of a large-scale money laundering operation that passed through the national financial system without activating the corresponding alerts.
The organization also filed a lawsuit against businessman Johnny Morales, who is accused of receiving more than RD$95 million through the issuance of fictitious invoices for services related to the Senasa fraud.
“People who have played a leading role must be involved. Those people must be apprehended and subjected to the next operation (of the Public Ministry),” the jurist stated.
They criticize ruling that favored those involved with house arrest
In his intervention, Surun Hernández criticized the house arrest sentences that benefit those involved: Cinty Acosta Sención, Heidi Mariela Pineda Perdomo, and Eduardo Read Estrella.
“That sentence sends a very bad message regarding a differentiation of treatment based on the political pressures that were exerted,” said the lawyer.
In that sense, he demanded that “everyone who stole the blood money from SeNaSa, must go to jail and serve a sentence”, while asking the authorities not to let those “criminals” get away with it.
In addition to the former director of the state insurance company Santiago Marcelo F. Hazim Albainy, the following are also defendants in the case: Rafael Luis Martínez Hazim, Gustavo Enrique Messina Cruz, Germán Rafael Robles Quiñones, Francisco Iván Minaya Pérez, Eduardo Read Estrella, Cinty Acosta Sención, Heidi Mariela Pineda, Ramón Alan Speakler Mateo and Ada Ledesma Ubiera.
Among other crimes, the group is charged with coalition of officials, malfeasance, association of wrongdoers, bribery, fraud against the Dominican State, embezzlement, forgery, use of false documents, and money laundering.
