The city council of Santo Domingo is prosecuting the coordinator of the Oficina Supervisora y Fiscalizadora de Obras del Estado, engineer Bienvenido Martínez Brea and six other people, including its architect and contractor, Roberto Bergés, dean of architecture of the Universidad Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who are involved in the construction of a geriatric hospital on property belonging to the municipality on grounds of the former Perla Antillana race track.
The case was lodged in the Primera Cámara
Penal del Juzgado de Primera Instancia by the legal advisor to the city council
and handed personally to Judge Miriam Germán by Mayor Rafael Suberví Bonilla.
Mayor Suberví is a second-time mayor of Santo Domingo and a PRD politician with
presidential aspirations. The judge set the court session for 13 February at 9
am. The municipality is basing its case on the alleged violation of property
rights and abuse of power under Law 5869 and Art. 188 of the Penal Code.
The impasse between the central government and
the city council began last year when the latter condemned the occupation of
25,000 square meters on the site by contractors to the office of Martínez Brea
for the construction of the geriatric center.
At the time, the council protested because the action contravened the agreement whereby the municipality granted 40,000 meters of the plot to the government for the construction of a maternity/children’s hospital. The grounds on which the race track was sited are property of the city. The council sent legal notice for the suspension of construction and even requested the National Police stop the work. The Mayor said that even President Joaquín Balaguer recognized the Municipal Resolution 182-95 issued to stop the work and ordered its cessation after meeting with Rafael Suberví. Nevertheless, the contractors continued building the center alleging it was of “extreme importance.”
Architect Roberto Bergés has answered the
legal case against him by saying that there will not be two hospitals in the
new Ciudad de la Salud, but four. He said that the project will have a cost of
RD$250 million and include a maternity/children’s hospital, a geriatric center,
a trauma center and a sophisticated unit for advanced medical diagnoses to be
run in coordination with Harvard University. The chief consultant for the
medical center is a company that has assisted in the construction of the state
medical network in Spain. One of Mr. Berges’ arguments in a full-page paid
newspaper advertisement was that in contrast to what the city council and some
members of the news media have stated, over 200,000 square meters will be left
for the city council even after the construction of the hospitals.
19-25 January 1996