Judge Leonarda Quezada of Santo Domingo West, when hearing the case against Metropolitan Bus Service Office (Omsa), supplier Eddy Santana Zorrilla, announced the case would be heard in two separate parts, after Santana’s lawyers requested the judge ask the relatives of murdered lawyer Yuniol Ramírez to leave the court. The defense argued that the state prosecutors had pressed charges against Santana for administrative corruption and not complicity in the murder of Ramírez.
The late Ramírez was carrying a case for corruption in Omsa, the government public bus agency, when he was murdered. After requesting information through the Freedom of Information Act, and not receiving this, Ramírez had taken the case to the Superior Administrative Court (TSA) where he requested information on five companies that in the past two years had been favored by 800 bus repair orders, including two owned by Santana Zorrilla.
Judge Leonarda Quezada heard the first part for corruption and ordered one month of pre-trial custody to Eddy Santana at Monte Plata jail. A second part for complicity of Santana in the murder would be heard right after the conclusion of the first part. Regarding the complicity of Santana, the judge declared inadmissible the request for a hearing of the involvement of Eddy Santana, a major Omsa supplier, in the murder of Yuniol Ramírez.
The family accuses Santana of complicity in the murder. The judge said that she had already applied pre-trial custody to the accused for one case and another measure would be unnecessary. She also argued that the prosecutors had left the court after the hearing of the first case for corruption and these would have had to be present to press charges together with the Ramírez family lawyer.
Ramón Ramírez, brother of the late Yuniol Ramírez, said they would continue to demand that Santana is included in the accusations for murder that at present affect the former director of Omsa, Manuel Rivas; and other Omsa employees, that are José Mercado Blanco (El Grande), Police colonel and financial officer at Omsa, Faustino Rosario Díaz, who have been ordered pre-trial custody, and Argenis Contreras, fugitive from justice.
Santana Zorrilla is accused of being part of a network of corruption in OMSA, along with Manual Rivas, the dismissed former director of OMSA, who is now currently serving one year on remand in jail in Najayo, linked to the murder of the university professor and lawyer Yuniol Ramírez.
The prosecutors stated that Eddy Santana had received instructions from Omsa director Manuel Rivas to pay RD$4 million to Ramírez Ferreras, of which the prosecutors say he delivered one million in a gas station at Av. Rómulo Betancourt on 6 October. While the prosecution presented a video as evidence, the family of Ramírez has presented a separate video arguing the evidence shows a different story – that the money was not to bribe Ramírez, rather it was to pay for his murder.
Diario Libre has reported that the bus repair contracts were so constant that a review of these showed that the buses spent more time in the repair shops than offering service to the public.
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25 October 2017
