The Controller of the Republic, Victor Grimaldi, has maintained his claim that massive fraud and embezzlement of funds was committed in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in the scheme to provide poor families living on national park grounds with stoves. Mr. Grimaldi told Hoy newspaper that out of 15,609 stoves and accompanying accessories given to high-ranking employees of Industry and Commerce in 1994 and 1995, less than 600 were given to the families for whom they were destined. He also claims that many of the stoves were allocated to members of the central government to distribute to poor families in the capital who do not live even remotely near any of the national parks in question.
Mr. Grimaldi, in his statement published in Hoy, says 900 of the stoves went to Licelot Marte de Barrios, the president of the National Petroleum Refinery; 158 to Alfredo Mota Ruiz, one of President Balaguer’s secretaries of state; 662 to Anibal Paez, deputy of the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC) and special assistant to the President; 1027 to Rafael Bello Andino, Secretary of the Presidency; and 880 to Manuel Bello, PRSC senator representing San Juan de la Maguana, among others.
Mr. Grimaldi did not specify, however, exactly what was done with the stoves that did not end up with the families in the national parks (the scheme was designed to discourage them from cutting down trees for firewood). He claims to have copies of the receipts of the stoves given to each member of the government, and to have distributed them to all of the national daily newspapers.
Mr. Grimaldi recently submitted his findings of fraud in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in respect of the stove scheme to the National Attorney General, Dr. Luis Nelson Pantaleon González, who did not act, claiming that the reports “lacked sufficient evidence” for prosecution.
24-30 May 1996