The former director of the Tourism Security Corps (Cestur), Brigadier General Carlos Torres Robiou sat for an interview with Julissa Céspedes of CDN (Channel 37) that aired on Tuesday, 4 May 2021 to tell his side of the Operation Coral under investigation by the Attorney General Office. State prosecutors say that RD$3 billion in payments made for services to hundreds of military and police on the Cestur payroll were regularly detoured to companies and accounts in the name of four principals accused of being part of a high-level fraud. These are former head of the military aides of former President Danilo Medina, Major General Adan Cáceres, lawyer-pastor Rossy Guzmán, and the former financial director of the Cestur, Police mayor Alejandro Girón Jiménez, and former payroll director, Police colonel Rafael Núñez de Aza.
The modus operandi revealed in the prosecution file is not new. While no one has previously been sentenced for the action, the media frequently has mentioned that persons on a payroll have had to share a significant amount of their wages with a person with great influence in the government. Media reports have looked into this situation at the Ministry of Foreign Relations and the National Police.
In the accusatory file, Torres Robiou is furthermore singled out for paying US$3,000 a month for the use of a Balcones del Atlántico apartment in Las Terrenas, Samana. The file case says that the payment was made to Único Real State, one of the companies now under the spotlight related to the accused in the Operation Coral investigation.
Torres Robiou said on the TV interview that he was not in the know of the detouring of the payroll payments because the payments were handled by two of the accused that were already in their positions as financial director and person in charge of payroll when he was named to head Cestur. These are police colonels Alejandro Girón Jiménez and Rafael Núñez de Aza. De Aza is the son of Rossy Guzmán, also accused of violating the law in the Coral Operation. Torres Robiou said that he had brought the issue of irregularities at the institution to the attention of inspector general of the organization, Colonel Ventura Pichardo.
Torres Robiou is represented by lawyer Cándido Simó.
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Julissa Céspedes on CDN
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5 May 2021