The legal counsel to the Abinader administration, Emmanuel Esquea has stated Dominican past ministers of public works have acted in collusion with asphalt (AC-30) vending company, Sargeant Petroleum LLC in accepting changes to the contracts outside of what was contracted. Esquea says the company on several occasions has modified conditions after the bidding had been closed. The irregular revisions became the modus operandi for the different governments that followed that of former President Hipolito Mejia (2000-2004).
The Abinader administration has sued Sargeant Petroleum before the Administrative Superior Court (TSA). The company has supplied grade-by-grade asphalt for 11 years.
Sargeant Petroleum LLC in turn has requested to the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank an arbitration process against the Dominican Republic for the termination of the agreement for purchase of asphalt. The date of the hearing has yet to be set.
Emmanuel Esquea Guerrero is the lawyer that represents the Dominican state in the lawsuit against Sargeant Petroleum and businessman Mustafa Abu Naba’a for contracts signed with the Dominican government in 2003 and 2013 for the purchase of asphalt cement.
The administrative contentious appeal filed before the Superior Administrative Court seeks Sargeant Petroleum reimburse the Dominican state with US$177 million. One of the claims is that in the tender won in 2003 (during the government of Hipólito Mejía), the Sargeant consortium, which transported and stored AC-30 from Venezuela, made an offer to Public Works in which it offered to transport at a cost of US$0.14 and store at US$0.14 per gallon of AC-30, for a total cost of US$0.28 per gallon. But, according to the accusation, in the tariff included in the contract, the cost per gallon transported and stored was $0.5418, of which $0.3618 was for transportation and $0.18 for storage, instead of the previous offer that had been declared the winner.
As reported in Diario Libre, the contentious appeal indicates that the same occurred with the contract time, which went from two to eight years. Esquea Guerrero explained the contracts would be carried out because there was “collusion with the past secretaries of Public Works,” with the intention of “swindling the state.”
“Every time there was a new minister of Public Works, something else was added to the contract,” he said when referring to the file that was submitted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Esquea said the same situation was repeated in August 2012 when Danilo Medina took office, when an addendum was added changing the conditions in detriment to the Dominican government.
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Diario Libre
16 November 2022