2022News

Judges absolve those accused in the Los Tres Brazos corruption case

The Los Tres Brazos corruption case is the third major corruption case prepared by prosecutors named under former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez in which those accused are acquitted. The Los Tres Brazos case, follows the absolving in the Odebrecht and Super Tucanos (Embraer) cases. The issue at hand is not the evidence, it is how the evidence has been presented by the prosecutors.

In the Los Tres Brazos case, Judge Juan Francisco Rodríguez Consoró rejected the accusations presented by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca) against the accused for bribery, coalition of officials and association of wrongdoers.

The judge indicated, in motivating his decision, that the accusations presented by Pepca did not contain sufficient merits for the accusations to be heard in trial.

“This judge understands that according to the evidence presented and the factual accounts developed by the Public Ministry in its accusations, it is impossible, for me, perhaps for another judge and for the Court (of Appeal), but my criteria, according to the reasoning, to give a decision and what I see, that there is no probability of conviction, which is what the judge of the preliminary hearing sees,” maintained Judge Rodríguez Consoro.

On the evidence offer, for example, the judge of the Sixth Court of the Instruction of the National District, said there was no way to prove the criminal type of bribery by the evidence presented.

“The accusations are ambiguous, imprecise as to that… as per the evidence and the configuration of the type, this judge understands that for that criminal type there is no proof,” he added.

The accused in the Los Tres Brazos case, which came to court in July 2018, were: Leoncio Almánzar, former director of the Corporación Dominicana de Empresas Estatales (Corde); Manuel Aybar, former real estate manager of that entity; Irving Cruz, former legal consultant, and Rosabel Castillo, former title registrar of the National District.

Also, Juana Gómez, representative of Proyecciones Gowi; Domingo Lebrón, president of Inversiones Fernández Parache y Asociados (Infepa), together with the employees of that company Carlos Gómez and Julio Gómez.

Also indicted were José de Pool, representative of the real estate company Titulatec; the surveyors Ana Ozuna and Hadonis Ruiz, as well as Lisetel González.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office says it will appeal.

Read more in Spanish:
El Caribe
Diario Libre

7 June 2022