Angel Rondón, the man who was the agent for Odebrecht in the Dominican Republic and was paid to expedite government procurement, is talking again. Rondón said in court he received more than US$200 million from Odebrecht for subcontracting, commercial representation, rental of equipment, and other concepts.
Rondon spoke for almost an hour during the resuming of the Odebrecht bribes case in the First Collegiate Court of the National District. Political analysts got busy deciphering the messages. Everyone agrees that Rondón’s ambiguous words are an open reminder that he knows who got what. Rondón reminded the court that he has been the Odebrecht representative since 2001. The Odebrecht contracting spans over the governments of Hipólito Mejía (2000-2004), Leonel Fernandez (2004-2012), and Danilo Medina (2012-2020).
Rondón said that Marco Cruz, Odebrecht’s manager in the country when the scandal broke, was a key player in the interrogations. Odebrecht officers announced in a New York court in December 2016 that the company had paid US$92 million to expedite contracting in the country.
When interrogations began in the Dominican Republic, nothing much happened. Rondón says that if Attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez had not removed Cruz from the responsibility to answer to questions by local prosecutors, “the whole political system in the country would have collapsed.”
Likewise, Rondón fired more accusations against the past prosecution authorities. He said the past investigation “is not useful, it is very repeated and it is totally false.” He said that former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez had 28 accusatory files in his hands, but only acted on 14. “God knows why,” he said in court last week.
Rondón challenged the prosecution to find evidence that incriminates him. “If they find a single check that guarantees that I gave bribes, we leave this trial right here and I make myself available to justice,” he said while guaranteeing that he is in a position to answer “letter by letter and page by page” everything in his file.
Rondón said Rodríguez proposed a deal to him. “When he said to me, ‘Let’s make a deal, accuse two or three of PRM and some’. I said, ‘No, I’m not going to make a deal with what you tell me. I rejected such an agreement,” he said.
Rondon has been scheduled for another hour to argue his case in court on Monday, 23 November 2020.
Of 14 originally accused, the past Attorney General Office reduced these to six persons. In addition to Angel Rondón, the others are former Minister of Public Works Victor Jose Diaz Rua; lawyer Conrado Pittaluga Arzeno; former president of the Senate Andres Bautista García; former senator and director of the National Aqueduct and Potable Water Institute (Inapa), Juan Roberto Rodriguez Hernandez; and former senator for San Cristóbal, Tommy Galán. The Supreme Court was hearing the case but then decided it should only hear the case of Tommy Galán due to his senator status. Galán is no longer a senator.
Read more in Spanish:
Hoy
Super7FM
Listin Diario
El Caribe
22 November 2020