Francisco Domínguez Brito, a former ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) presidential candidacy hopeful, was the spokesman for the PLD political committee during the press conference held on 15 June to lambast the opposition for the role Abreu Navarro has played in PRM campaign activities in the southwest.
Yamil Abreu Navarro had been a major for Las Lagunas in Padre las Casas, a 4,000-inhabitant mountain town, from 2016-2020 winning the position for the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) that at the time had allied with the PLD in that election. Later Abreu would switch to the PRM when the PRD split between those who backed Miguel Vargas and those who backed Luis Abinader and Hipólito Mejía.
Now it is public that Yamil Abreu had been sought in extradition by the United States judiciary since 2017, and the PLD seeks to gain political mileage. The PLD says that Abreu is not the only PRM leader with strong ties to drug trafficking. He said there are similar activists operating in Hato Mayor, El Seibo, Santo Domingo, Duarte, Nagua, Azua, Barahona, Valverde, La Vega, Santiago and La Romana. “The drug capos use the political parties to launder money and secure cover-ups for their activities when their favorite parties make it to government. This corrodes justice and politics,” says Domínguez Brito, speaking for the PLD.
Muckracking journalist Altagracia Salazar comments on how governments in the Dominican Republic have covertly backed drug traffickers. She mentions the cases of Arturo del Tiempo, whom would be charged for drug trafficking in Spain, but in the Dominican Republic had received millions in financing from the Leonel Fernandez administration and the governmental Banco de Reservas. And the more recent case of United States’s accused capo Cesar Emilio Peralta. Salazar recalls Domínguez Brito has acknowledged he could not proceed against Cesar Emilio Peralta because Peralta had protection in high up levels in the Medina government. Peralta would eventually escape from the Dominican Republic and is now in Colombia waiting to be extradited to the United States. In 2019, Attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez gave more than a week’s time between when the US judiciary presenting evidence against Peralta and when the Attorney General Office began a massive nationwide operation to arrest Peralta. Just days before, photos of Peralta had filled social media covering his enjoying a Latin music event at Hard Rock Hotel Punta Cana. Salazar recalls that Cesar Emilio Peralta’s spouse is sister to Berlinesa Franco, who recently resigned from a government agency after accusations of major corruption. President Danilo Medina is godfather to one of Franco’s offspring.
Meanwhile, the presidential candidate of Alianza País, Guillermo Moreno, called for an end to drug trafficking protection. Speaking on Monday, 15 June he observed that government officials, legislators, military and police are all involved in the problem. When participating in the “Meetings with Presidential Candidates 2020,” organized by the Institutionality and Justice Foundation (Finjus), Moreno spoke of a paramilitary structure that trains people in hitman, money laundering, among other illegal activities with ties to drug trafficking operations in the country. Moreno explained that cases such as capos Quirino Paulino, Figueroa Agosto and César Emilio Peralta are examples of the complicity between drug trafficking and the local echelons of power.
Moreno assures that if elected President, he would promote a new democratic system “to straighten out the Dominican Republic,” fighting white-collar crime and corruption. “We must reform this National Police into a civilian body made up of honest men and women, governed by a career based on merit, guaranteeing all its members decent remuneration. This means putting an end to the mafias within it and any connection with crime,” he said.
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Altagracia Salazar – Sin Maquillaje
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16 June 2020