The Attorney General Office and the Police are investigating a case involving an estimated 1,200 kilos of cocaine said to have gone missing after reportedly being confiscated in DICAN operations in Miches, Boca Chica and from a home in Ensanche Isabelita in Santo Domingo by Police Central Anti-drug Bureau (Dican) agents on 27 September 2014. In the more recent Isabelita case, assistant prosecutors Maximo Diaz and Leonidas Suarez are also under investigation. The unreported drugs are valued at RD$50 million to RD$3.5 billion, as distinctly reported in the press, and investigators point to complicity between prosecutors and the Dican agents and officers. Official reports say that the exact amount of missing drugs has not been ascertained.
As reported in El Nacional, Peravia province senator Wilton Guerrero said that the Dican has been the country’s leading micro-trafficking cartel. He said the organization has been the “black sheep” in the fight against drug trafficking in 2014.
Created in 2008 to tackle drug micro-trafficking, Dican operates in parallel to the DNCD and the National Drugs Council.
Dican director Colonel Carlos Fernandez Valerio has been suspended while the investigations are underway. Colonel Francisco Eladio Bloise Olmeda was provisionally appointed as his replacement.
On 31 December 2014, El Dia reported that the attorney general office had issued an order of arrest for Fernandez Valerio and other officers and prosecutors, following an investigation into everyone linked to the seized drugs.
Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito says that there are indications of illicit enrichment among the people responsible for prosecuting this crime.
A board of Police generals and high-ranking government intelligence officers are participating in the investigation of the irregularities detected in the case of the seized drugs. They include Police Internal affairs director General Orlando Pichardo Reynoso and the Police Intelligence director Colonel Jose Antonio Ceballos.
They are joined by an Attorney General Office commission made up of prosecutors Bolivar Sanchez, Daniel Miranda Villalona, Ivan Lorenzo and Jose Alberto Alberto Jimenez, and Santo Domingo prosecutors Robert Rodriguez and Olga Dina Llaverias.
Dican director Fernandez Valerio was appointed to the post last year, but he previously served as deputy director of the Dican investigations unit.
Meanwhile, Julio Cesar de la Rosa Tiburcio called for the elimination of the Dican saying that it violates the law that creates the National Drug Control Agency (DNCD). “It is an obstacle to the effective fight and persecution of macro and micro drug trafficking and has caused a significant increase in police corruption,” he said, as reported in Listin Diario. Police chief Major General Manuel Castro, however, said that drug trafficking has also permeated the DCNCD and that organization has not been closed.
As reported in El Dia on 5 January 2015, sociologist Daniel Pou commented that the lack of external controls and the autonomy with which the Police and military corps operate are at the root of the problem.
Consultados tienen opiniones diversas sobre eliminación Dican
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2015/01/03/i951831_jefe-polica-nacional-defiende-continuacin-del-dican.html
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2014/12/31/i948191_sancionarn-los-responsables-caso-del-dican.html
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2014/12/30/350953/Procuraduria-amplia-comision-investigadora
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2014/12/30/350907/Adocco-pide-eliminacion-de-Dican
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2014/12/30/350858/Integran-fiscales-a-pesquisa-en-Antinarcoticos-de-la-PN
http://djpin.net/robo-cocaina-en-pn-supero-los-mil-kilos