The Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (Finjus) has criticized the fact that there has still not been a single penalty for any of the more than 1,200 public officials named on a list issued by the Chamber of Accounts in August 2015, for violating Law 311-14 that requires government employees to file a Sworn Declaration of Assets.
According to a report in Diario Libre, Finjus attributes the failure to punish those officials to the “institutional deficiencies that prevent the Dominican State from being more transparent (…) which occur in many acts of the Public Administration or the branches of the State.”
“As of now it is unknown whether any of these officials have been penalized as is expressly set out by the law,” Finjus complains in a document in which it evaluates the Dominican justice system, which, they say, is “immersed in a brutal and unprecedented institutional crisis.”
The Foundation says it is worrisome that the belief that the principal problem is the impunity of officials continues to grow in the country, saying that this could “become a dangerous obstacle to national development.”
As an example, Finjus mentions that in 2015 the criminal justice system “once again failed in not being able to process and judge the emblematic cases of public corruption as well as investigating and pursuing the sources of this corruption within the state.”
Finjus also lists the multiple cases of alleged corruption at the OISOE, including recent ones related to an architect’s suicide and the remodeling of the Dario Contreras Hospital as sources of indignation for Dominican society, since there has been no concrete action from within the justice system. Finjus also made clear allusions to the case of Senator Felix Bautista and his co-defendants, another high-profile OISOE-related case.
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/justicia/finjus-critica-no-haya-sancion-a-funcionarios-que-no-declararon-bienes-NC2352078
