A breakdown in the electricity system of the Kaluba diesel tanker ship raised red flags and international authorities urged an inspection after the ship stopped at sea around 200 nautical miles in international waters near Aruba and did not request international assistance. The ship was traveling with fuel and was scheduled to dock in Puerto Plata on 27 December 2017. It had departed from Aruba.
As reported in Listin Diario, when the ship did not request international assistance, as is normal in cases such as this one, the agents of the US Coastal Guard reached the ship suspecting it was carrying drugs in the hull. The boat was escorted to Puerto Plata. When nothing was found, the ship was then escorted to the Naval Base in Sans Souci where prosecutors and drug control agents found 75 packages of white substance hidden in a secret compartment in the ship. The National Forensic Sciences (Inacif) verification confirmed the ship was transporting 1,502 packages of cocaine.
Traveling on the boat were Venezuelan José Quijada Salazar; Colombians Silvio Ibarra Vega and Manuel Escobar Bolaños; Cuban Pedro Betancourt Tabio; Nicaraguan Joel Ponce Ordoñez, from Honduras Marbin Lambert Harry; and Dominicans Salvador Gómez Cuevas, Rene Cuesta Feliz, Fermín Samboy Cuevas, Damerides Gómez Saldaña, Elvis Langomas Medina and Teurison Valenzuela Samboy, who were ordered to serve one year pre-trial custody in La Victoria jail.
A separate hearing, was scheduled for Sunday, 7 January 2018, to establish pre-trial custody for Ernesto Bienvenido Guevara (Maconi), Dante Meraldo Medina and Dante Wilfredo Medina Ozuna. Maconi was arrested in the Jumbo located at Av. Gregorio Luperon, while the other two were arrested in the Ensanche Ozama of eastern Santo Domingo. As reported, the public prosecutors and the DNCD, and international security forces, were on the trail of these suspects who are now linked to the Kaluba shipment.
Ernesto Bienvenido Guevara (Maconi) is remembered as the operations arm of the drug trafficking structure former army colonel Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo directed in the Dominican Republic. He also was processed in the Dominican judiciary for being a key figure in the drug trafficking network lead by the late Rolando Florián Féliz. Indeed, El Dia newspaper highlights how he is again arrested now in the case of the Kaluba ship, under the same captain of the Phoenix ship for which he first came to the press limelight in 1994 when a 200-kilo cocaine shipment was seized. He served sentences in the DR and US and was released prior to the complete fulfillment of his sentences for good behavior.
El Dia reports that Maconi is just one of several who had been extradited to the United States only to serve short sentences and return to enjoy their millionaire assets in the Dominican Republic.
Read more in Spanish:
Listin Diario
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
El Dia
El Dia
8 January 2018
