Investigative reporter Alicia Ortega presented her work on the Santo Domingo Metro system during the 2018 Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism that was held over the weekend. Ortega’s participation is part of the section dedicated to state corruption and her research was selected by the Press and Society Institute as being among the best journalistic reporting in Latin America to be presented at the four-day conference in Bogotá.
Ortega’s report also includes the more than two dozen companies tied to Diandino Peña who was for many years in charge of the Opret office that was building the Metro system.
Ortega’s research is called “The Undeclared Emporium” and was carried on national Dominican television in May 2017. Nine months of research lead to the revelation on TV that Peña was behind at least 29 companies, 15 of them registered overseas and 14 in the Dominican Republic. The information was gathered thanks to a major leaking of information and the hard work of international investigators and the revelations produced by the famous “Panama papers” on the database of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that specialized in creating offshore companies while hiding the real identity of the owners.
The information from those papers also brought to light companies in tax havens that were held by government officials as well as important political, entertainment and government personalities in the Dominican Republic, especially Diandino Peña who was fired from his position just days after Alicia Ortega’s revelations.
Follow the story in Spanish:
Diario Libre
El Informe con Alicia Ortega
12 November 2018
