The government Procurement Department (Direccion General de Contrataciones Publicas) has told Diario Libre that the RD$176.9 million purchase of household goods by the Chamber of Deputies is under investigation. The purchases were made from 19 authorized government vendors. Yocasta Guzman said that they would be verifying the locations of the vendor companies after visits from Diario Libre journalists showed that many of their premises did not correspond with the registered addresses. Guzman announced that they would do so with all the 42,000 government suppliers, by matching them with the DGII tax records.
She said that of RD$192 billion in purchases for 2014, more than RD$38 billion needs to be allocated to small businesses.
Public charity is not a function of the deputies, but is a common practice, with payments known to have been assigned to the deputies in Easter (for the traditional sweet bean dish), before the start of the school year (for backpacks for students), Christmas and other occasions.