Santo Domingo.- The Public Ministry revealed that within the National Health Insurance (Senasa) an structure operated that approved contracts to providers without meeting the minimum requirements, motivated by political, personal and economic interests. According to the Operation Cobra file, the contracting analyst Nidia Esmeralda Valdez declared that the then director, Santiago Marcelo Hazim, justified these decisions with expressions such as “he contributed to the campaign” or “we have to help him”, in reference to people or companies that contributed politically or belonged to his circle of trust.
The document indicates that Hazim acted alongside a group of high-ranking officials, including Germán Robles, legal consultant, Francisco Iván Minaya, Health Manager, Roberto Canaán, User Care Manager, and Carmen José Velázquez, Affiliation Manager, who, according to the accusation, formed an “illicit coalition” aimed at manipulating the contracting processes.
The Public Ministry maintains that this team approved providers without authorization, without infrastructure and, on occasion, without actually being health centers, while others paid bribes to enter the service network.
The accusing body claims that the Medical Contracting Committee was fraudulently created and used to formalize a sustained scheme of corruption, influence peddling, and sale of decisions within Senasa, in violation of Law 340-06 and the Dominican Social Security System.
The National District’s Permanent Attention Office will hear this Tuesday, at 2:00 p.m., the coercive measure against Santiago Hazim and the other nine defendants in Operation Cobra. The Public Ministry requested 18 months of preventive prison and that the case be declared complex, considering that it is an structured corruption network.
