The case about Odebrecht has been in the international news for over a year. Here are details being shared in the media on the corruption and bribery scandal.
Odebrecht executive, Marcos Vasconcelos Cruz, said in his sworn statement that he paid the lobbyist Angel Rondon on 21 different occasions via his companies Conamsa and Lashon Corp., so that he could distribute the bribes to officials and legislators so that public works projects be awarded to the Brazilian construction company. He said that Rondon received 2% of the contract for each project carried out by Odebrecht, or 16 in total, with the exception of the largest of all projects, the mega power plant under construction at Punta Catalina. Regarding the power plant, the local Public Ministry has determined the case would be investigated after the construction of the power plant has been completed. As the Odebrecht investigation gained momentum, the Medina administration appointed a commission that concluded in its report that there were no major irregularities in government contracting or construction of the power plant.
It is alleged that one of the persons who most benefited from the Odebrecht largess was Victor Diaz Rua, who began receiving money while at the National Institute of Aqueducts and Potable Water (Inapa) and then as the Minister of Public Works. Several reports have pointed to the overpricing of the public works contracted, sometimes by upwards of double the original contracted amount.
One of the projects indicated by the Justice Department as an example of overpricing is the Coral Highway, linking La Romana and Punta Cana that ended up costing US$536,333,858 when the original price was US$253,702,835, for at least a 97% overpricing. For this project the bribe paid was US $6,629,000 that Rondon would have paid to Conrado Pittaluga, Díaz Rúa’s lawyer.
Another highly overvalued project was the Pinalito Hydroelectric Dam whose final price was US$187,393,000, and the initial price was said to be US$131,721,000. Odebrecht construction executives Ernesto Sa Viera Biarde, Marcos Vasconcelos Cruz, Luis Eduardo Da Rocha Soares and Marcelo Odebrecht are listed in the case file of the Attorney General as participants in the bribery scheme.
According to the El Dia newspaper, the Odebrecht company carried out 16 public works projects in the Dominican Republic and the contracts and financing through the National Congress were obtained by means of bribery two legislators and officials through the commercial representative of the company, Angel Rondon. Sometimes the bribes were paid directly using a corporate structure of two offshore companies that belong to Rondon in Antigua & Barbuda and Panama.
Read more in Spanish:
El Dia
CDN
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Hoy
14 June 2018
