Diario Libre reports today that, according to US investigators questioning of arrested pilot Daniel de la Cruz, the Caribair plane that carried a shipment of 455 kilos of cocaine last year left Herrera International Airport in Santo Domingo at 3:30am that day. He confessed during the trial that he had been offered US$200,000 for the shipment. Diario Libre reports that witnesses also saw three SUVs enter the hangar of the airline at around that hour.
The newspaper focuses on the fact that at least four Caribair airplanes underwent modifications in their cargo holds in 2002 that were not authorized by the Civil Aviation Board. The newspaper also reports that Rear Admiral Luis Homero Lajara Sol?, who was in charge of the initial investigations into the plane, was soon after transferred to ?zua, and later retired from the service. The discovery of the modifications to the cargo space is not contained in the dossier the rear admiral prepared on the case, however. Caribair airplanes were also leased by the advance team of the Presidency and carried the official seal of the security corps.
Last year, Diario Libre reported that at the Herrera International Airport it was well known that large amounts of money would enter and leave the country on the aircraft used by the military aide corps for the advance team. Investigators, however, did not interview the people working at the airport, nor did they investigate the use of the airplanes that transported merchandise and money. Similarly, the pilots who flew the airplanes and helicopter at the disposal of the advance team were not questioned.
The newspaper at the time complained that the mystery surrounding the airplanes was such that not even the Civil Aviation Board would specify which flights were carried out by the advance team. The Civil Aviation Board was not included in the investigations, even though it has a record of all the departures and arrivals of all aircraft, including those of the airplane and helicopter that have been confiscated.
The investigations took off after US Federal Authorities detained the HI-772 used by the advance team on 29 October in Miami. At the end of September, a Caribair jet had also been detained at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) by a Federal drug agency, when a shipment of 455 kilos of cocaine was discovered. Up until that time, the advance team would use the airplanes of that same company for their team trips. Pilot Daniel de la Cruz was only said to have committed ?an abuse of confidence?.