Defense lawyers for councilman Amaury Pereyra, his brother Milton and city government officers Saturnino Sanchez and Andres Diaz, arrested in the case of forgery of government officer passports in order to gain visas for travel abroad, have called on state prosecutors to question the secretary general of the Dominican Municipal League, Amable Aristy Castro, as reported in Diario Libre. Councillor Juan Roberto Gonzalez urged more in depth investigations into the places where the mafia came from, with the objective that the ringleaders, whom he said are not the poor city councilmen who are currently in jail at La Victoria, fall. He said that these were the ones who earned hundreds of millions in the business generated by the sale of city government passports. “Amable Aristy Castro cannot feign ignorance, a person who is at the head of an institution where such a colossal fraud occurred for three years, the fraud was orchestrated, and he says he knows nothing,” said the lawyer. He said that the Ministry of Foreign Relations also needs to be investigated. “The people who have the greater responsibility in this colossal fraud are not here,” he said. Amable Aristy Castro is considered to be one of the most powerful and politically influential persons in the east of the country.
The issuing of city government passports started in the Dominican Municipal League that requested that the Ministry of Foreign Relations issue the passports for the alleged city council officers. The third link occurred at the Department of Migration, when inspectors were apparently being told to not question doubtful passenger documents.