The Chamber of Accounts of the Dominican Republic recommended the Central Electoral Board pay the arrears with the Spanish company Indra Sistemas that supplied electronic vote counting equipment for the 2016 general election. The equipment that would have operated on the day of the 2016 election cost taxpayers US$35,266,003.
Back in 2016, then president of the JCE had defended the high cost of purchase instead of a rental saying that the equipment would be rented out to other central electoral boards in the region to recover its cost. In reality, the equipment failed to serve its purpose with most of the votes having to be manually counted. The equipment has never been rented out. It also has incurred high storage costs for the JCE.
As reported, the board of the Chamber of Accounts on Tuesday, 28 November 2017 approved the final report (Resolution AUD-2017-032) on the special investigation carried out into the differences between Indra and the Central Electoral Board (JCE). Indra claims a debt of US$13,927,931. The report established that the main officers of the JCE acted within the constitutional, legal, and within the rules and norms for public fund administrators.
The resolution was signed by Hugo Francisco Álvarez Pérez, president of the Chamber; Félix Álvarez Rivera, member; Margarita Melenciano Coporán, member and Carlos Tejada Díaz, secretary of the board.
The opinion from the Chamber of Accounts had been requested by the new board at the JCE after officers of the IT department said that the equipment could not be used for the 2020 election.
Listin Diario reported that in a letter sent by the financial director of the JCE states that the 2016 used up all the resources allotted by the central government for that election and that the JCE does not have the US$14 million to pay the debt. “We expect the Dominican government to provide the funds to meet this commitment.” The letter is dated 16 May 2017.
Read more in Spanish:
Listin Diario
El Dia
4 December 2017
