Vigny Bellerive, a priest of Haitian origin, will be indicted by the Central Electoral Board (JCE) for having registered 87 Haitians as Dominican citizens in the Civil Registry of Mao, Valverde Province. A JCE press release indicated that a commission composed of Judges Roberto Rosario Marquez, Ramon Hernandez Dominguez and Jose Luis Tavarez Tavarez, recommended that Bellerive be indicted after studying a report on the case by the JCE Security Department. Bellerive would use the ID (cedula) of a woman called Dominga Diaz Hernandez to register his “children”. The fraud was detected when an unusual number of people of Haitian origin – all of them from Mao, Valverde – started applying for cedulas in Santiago. It was later discovered that all had been registered by Father Bellerive. The birth certificates were issued by the Civil Registry in Mao between 1987 and 1989.
El Caribe reports that the number of Haitians declared by Bellerive was 90. Also, a source at the JCE explained to El Caribe that twenty years ago, according to the law, civil registries did not require the physical presence of the parents to declare children, something that could have made it easier for the priest to do what he did.