Lawyer Manuel Ramon Vasquez Perrotta said that the big business is to leave what he described as “a Trojan horse” inserted in state contracts, during a radio interview on the Teo Veras talk show on 91.3FM this morning, Thursday 21 March. He focused on recent uproar on the series of contracts with clauses that are extremely slanted in favor of the contractor against the common Dominican good.
He said the business has been to leave a clause that the signatories know will not be met so the other party has grounds to sue and most likely win the case in order to share the benefits.
In the past, many contracts have had to be changed or revoked because of their unsustainable cost. He made the point that everyone wonders about the millions paid in legal fees to advisors who were supposed to watch out for the common interest in the drafting of these contracts.
“In a contract of 50-60 pages it is easy to leave an article, a clause that it is known will not be fulfilled, to generate the compensation and for the compensation to then be shared,” he said on the morning radio talk show.
He called for an in-depth judicial investigation into the legislators or government officials who have participated and the external advisors, private, who were paid millions for advice, for cases where the contract collapsed.
“Immoral contracts are the responsibility of government officials and advisors,” he said. He added that people were talking and getting together on this subject and that this prevails for all contracts, and the specialized Congressional commissions and other government officials.
“We are placing fine glassware in the care of elephants,” he said referring to Dominican legislators.
He says that any contract that delivers national assets under disadvantageous conditions should be annulled.
Vasquez Perrotta is the author of “Crimenes y Delitos de Computadora y Alta Tecnologia en la Era de los Convergentes n Elementos de Frontera en el Derecho Informatico Penal,” on computer and high tech crimes and winner of “Best Book Award” from the Inter-American Bar Association (IABA) XLV Conference in 2009.