The Santo Domingo Public Prosecution Service has accused the former director of the Metropolitan Bus Service Office (OMSA) Manuel Rivas Medina, of being a member of a criminal network that committed acts of corruption, prevarication against the state and murdered lawyer Yuniol Ramírez Ferreras. Prosecutors are asking for the case to be declared complex, which will allow more time to put their case together.
As part of the request for coercive measures, they state that businessman Eddy Santana Zorrilla had agreed to pay Ramirez Ferreras RD$4 million to drop the case he had filed for corruption against Omsa transactions in the Superior Administrative Court (TSA).
The request for coercive measures asks for a year in preventive custody in La Victoria against Rivas Medina, José Mercado Blanco, “El Grande”, police colonel Faustino Rosario Díaz and Argenis Contreras González (on th run). However it states that Santana Zorrilla, who is a supplier for OMSA, was the person who handed over the money and contacted the lawyer and university professor several times. Nevertheless, in the preliminary file accusation, Santana has not been charged in connection with the case. [Subsequently, on 18 October 2017, he was arrested in the case.]
According to the Public Prosecutor, it was colonel Rosario, who took Contreras González, personal assistant to the director of OMSA, to meet with Santana Zorrilla at a gas station on Romulo Betancourt Avenue and was witness to the handing over of the RD$1 million as the first payment for the desisting to the corruption case.
The rest of the money would be given after the writ was withdrawn on 12 October when the hearing was scheduled. It was later known that Ramirez had been murdered.
Three days after the university professor was found dead in a stream in Santo Domingo West, the authorities carried out several raids. One was at the home of the man on the run, Argenis Contreras. There they found an arsenal including a 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson pistol, a 12 mm shotgun, and pieces of rifles. They also found military uniforms and several ID cards from the Ministry of Interior and Police in his name.
On Tuesday, 17 October the authorities found the pickup truck used in the kidnap and murder, left abandoned in a street in Manoguayabo near where the body was found.
In the accusation, the Santo Domingo prosecutors say that Police coronel Faustino Rosario Díaz, who was also the financial director for Omsa, was in charge of the illicit operations managed by Manuel Antonio Rivas Medina. When the later traveled abroad prior to the murder, Rosario kept contact with Argenis Contreras González for payment operations and organized and supplied the means for the murder of the lawyer.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
19 October 2017
