The arraignments for the military corruption scheme named Operation Coral 5G has been postponed for Tuesday, 30 November 2021. The accusatory file is around 634 pages long.
The main persons accused in the Operation Coral 5G case are the Air Force generals Juan Carlos Torres Robiou, former chief of the Specialized Corps of Touristic Security (Cestur), Julio Camilo de los Santos, former deputy chief of the Presidential Security Corps (Cusep) and Army General Boanerges Reyes Batista.
The investigations carried out by the Administrative Corruption Prosecution Agency (PEPCA) reveal that of RD$30,000 allocated to Dominican Japan Olympian silver medalist Zacarias Bonnat, RD$27,000 was retained by the alleged high-ranking military that are under investigations in Operation Coral 5G case.
The criminal network apparently had the blessing of the military leadership that didn’t think twice about keeping the Air Force allotment to Bonnat, an elite athlete.
Bonnat in July 2021 Tokyo Olympics won a silver medal for the country in the weightlifting.
The occurrence is not one of millions of pesos, but is extremely irritating considering Dominican elite athletes’ great courage and efforts.
Diario Libre shares the Operation Coral 5G scheme as it appears in the Pepca file:
Lieutenant colonel José Ramón Santos Jiménez (National Police), second lieutenant Vicente Girón Jiménez (FARD), lieutenant Erinson Brens Rosario (Dominican Army) and first lieutenant Juan Ramón Tejada Hilario (FARD) recruited military personnel who were assigned to other institutions. These then presented the candidates to the accused Raúl Alejandro Girón Jiménez, who screened them together with his superior, the accused Colonel Rafael Núñez de Aza (P. N.), former financial director of Cusep and Cestur, and requested their incorporation. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the list of fronts was approved then by the accused Juan Carlos Torres Robiou, former head of Cestur, and by Adán Benoni Cáceres Silvestre, former director of Cusep, who had devised the format for the diversion of public funds.
Each of the recruiters had their particular list of people to collect each month, who made the deposits, transfers, or cash deliveries.
The accusatory file mentions that after collecting the money from the payrolls, Erinson Brens Rosario, second lieutenant Vicente Girón Jiménez (FARD), lieutenant colonel José Ramón Santos Jiménez (P.N. ) and first lieutenant Juan Ramón Tejada Hilario (FARD), delivered the money in cash or by bank transfer to the accused Raúl Alejandro Girón Jiménez, who kept a percentage and delivered most of the money in cash to the accused Rafael Núñez de Aza, at his residence in Colinas del Oeste.
Alejandro Girón Jiménez early on, when arrested for Operation Coral, reached a deal with the prosecutors and has shared details of much of the corruption operations that happened and were happening in the military.
Operation Coral 5G is a part 2 of Operation Coral. The main person accused in Operation Coral is the former chief of the Presidential Security Corps (Cusep), Major General Adan Cáceres Silvestre.
Today, an editorial written by Ines Aizpún in Diario Libre focuses on the extremes to which the influential military resorted to profit personally, milking funds from those allotted to national security and children’s organization (Conani).
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Diario Libre
26 November 2021