The director of the Institute of Energy of the UASD said that it is true that power companies are altering power bills to charge consumers more. Jose Luis Moreno San Juan, who originally came to the DR to work for the Spanish company Union Fenosa, says that because of his work experience he knows that the private power companies maintain a custom of overbilling in order to show their shareholders a more favorable financial outlook, as reported in Hoy newspaper. Moreno San Juan says he has no doubt that this has occurred in the case of AES, a company he says has advisors that traditionally inflate their invoices to garner greater payments than what they are owed. He said that it is public information that the Ege-Haina generation company collected money some time ago for the same fuel subsidy ? both through the CDEE and the distributors, a fact that was only made known a long time afterward. Moreno San Juan explained that as all these companies have credibility, they issue invoices for which ?nobody checks the amounts and that only get passed from one in-tray to another.?
He doubted the recent accusations of Edwin Croes, the financial advisor to the governmental CDEEE, who alleged that the Catholic Church, large industries and media, and the National Council of Business (CONEP) were in arrears in their payment of the power service. He said that it is well-known that if a business does not pay for electricity received, the distributors cut the service. ?I do not think there is any business that is two bills or three bills behind that is still receiving the service,? he said. If this were possible, the blame would belong to none other than the distributor company itself.