Santo Domingo.- While expectations grow that the sentence condemning her to five years in prison will be enforced, former legislator of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), Rosa Amalia Pilarte, desperately tries to avoid jail through an appeal before the Constitutional Court (TC), where she requests the suspension of the ruling that sends her to Rafey Mujeres, in Santiago.
The resource was filed this Monday, just days after the Plenary of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) rejected its cassation appeal in its entirety, upholding the conviction for money laundering from drug trafficking.
Their team of lawyers, headed by Eduardo Jorge Prats and Julio Cury, also requested the constitutional review of the ruling, a legal move that does not, by itself, stop the execution of the sentence.
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The Supreme Court’s decision was based on compelling evidence, as between 2003 and 2021, Pilarte declared income of only RD$16 million, but moved more than RD$4.4 billion in his bank accounts. An inexplicable gap between his formal income and financial movements that, according to the Public Ministry, come directly from an international drug trafficking network.
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Deputy prosecutor Pedro Amador, who led the investigation, and jurists like Francisco Álvarez have recalled that the SCJ’s ruling is enforceable. “A review before the Constitutional Court is not suspensive, except that the TC so provides,” Álvarez warned.
Pilarte is not the only one in the family facing justice. She was accused along with her husband, Miguel Arturo López Florencio (alias “Micky López”), and their two children, all charged with money laundering linked to drug trafficking. Her husband and children were favored with the termination of the process by the First Collegiate Court of La Vega, a decision that the Public Ministry has appealed.
The family fortune includes 13 properties in La Vega, valued at more than RD$4,000 million, which were seized. All this under the shadow of Pablo Antonio Martínez Javier, identified as the ringleader of the criminal network, with whom the Public Ministry links the Pilarte family.
