The details flowing from the leaked versions of the Chamber of Accounts audit of the Metropolitan Office of Bus Service (Omsa) present a Dominican government where people with influence seem to have been able to spend as they have pleased. The most recent revelations regarding the huge scandal at the Metropolitan Office of Bus Service (Omsa) carried out by the Chamber of Accounts regarding the administration of Manuel Rivas has not only confirmed the complaints regarding corruption in the agency but also the lack of any controls in the way public officials at Omsa and the Controller General Office, together with private individuals, handled some RD$9 billion between 2012 and 2017.
For instance, auditors were able to establish the fact that 25 of the 43 suppliers to Omsa, to which over RD$10 billion had been paid, were not located at the addresses on their contracts. The audit reads: “It will be noted that of the 43 service providers visited, who received payment for RD$1.8 billion, of these 25 were not able to be located. These had received from OMSA RD$1.05 billion that represents 50% of the amount paid to service providers.
Among the companies that were not located are Tech Solution and Martisdom Group that belong to Eddie Santana Zorrilla, who together with Rivas, Faustino Rosario, the former financial manager for Omsa, Argenis Contreras, Rivas’ assistant, and José Antonio Mercado Blanco are accused of being the persons responsible for the murder of lawyer and university professor Yuniol Ramirez Ferreiras.
One example of the irregularities found by the auditors is that of the company Climosa Enterprises that received payment for RD$244,061,004 for services dispatched, but it could not be located at its address of John F. Kennedy at the corner of Lope de Vega, where no such business exists. The businesses associated with Santana Zorrilla, who had offered the lawyer RD$4.0 million to drop his complaint on corruption at the Omsa, received payment from OMSA for the amount of RD$332 million between 2012 and 2017.
The Controller General Office defended the purchases saying Resolution 15-08 from the Procurement Agency (Contrataciones Públicas) allows direct purchases for airline tickets, fuel and vehicle repairs).
Manuel Rivas, the former director of Omsa, told the press: “I acted according to established regulations. I hope truth and justice will prevail.” His former financial director, colonel Faustino Rosario Díaz has also argued that all the purchases carried out at the Omsa were covered by Procurement Law 340-06 and Resolution 15-08 that authorized purchases by direct contracting.
An editorial in El Dia asks out loud “Where were the controls?” The editorialist writes: “The Omsa case calls out load for a total revision of the state control mechanisms, since the disasters that the audit describes happened before the eyes of all.”
An editorial in Diario Libre says that the Omsa affair has exposed one of the greatest fallacies of Dominican institutional development: the advances in corruption checks and controls. Writes the editorialist: “After the scandal it has been possible to verify that the controllers do not control, that the Chamber of Accounts does not do the accounts well and that Procurement Agency does not really seem to pay much attention to purchases or contracts.”
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
El Dia
El Dia
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
19 April 2018
