Persio Maldonado, the president of the Dominican Society of Daily Newspapers, says that the Attorney General Office presented a certificate to the members of the Official Commission designated by President Danilo Medina to review the Odebrecht-Punta Catalina contract that eventually established no bribes had been paid. At the time the Attorney General Office had received the file from Brazilian prosecutors on the operation of Odebrecht in the Dominican Republic. The file included operations of the Structured Operations Division of Odebrecht that was located in Santo Domingo.
Maldonado was a member of the commission that President Medina designated to investigate the tender by which the Punta Catalina contract was awarded. The certificate, that was issued at the request of the official commission, certified that during the tender procedures for the thermoelectric power plant, as per what was revealed by Odebrecht, bribes were not paid. The certificate did say that bribes were paid for the approval of the contract in Congress.
Maldonado said the commission did not have mechanisms to determine if someone had received money to vote in favor of Odebrecht. He made the observations when interviewed by Hector Herrera Cabral for D’Agenda TV show on Channel 11. Maldonado is the publisher of El Nuevo Diario.
He said the members of the commission named by President Medina were asked to determine if the contracting procedure met with the requirements established by Public Procurement Law 340-06. He said in the conclusions of the report, the commission recommended that the attorney general investigate if bribes had been paid during the tender procedure. Maldonado said that the members of the commission, as all citizens, had the same concern regarding how could Punta Catalina come clean if bribes had been paid in the case of all the other Odebrecht contracts signed in the country.
“Let’s not forget that these files that are coming out now, are the files that were outside of the regular company control mechanisms. The investigations correspond to the Attorney General’s Office because we did not have the power to prosecute anyone criminally,” argued Maldonado.
Maldonado made the remarks after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed evidence that at least US$39 million in transfers related to a thermoelectric power plant were made by the Structured Operations Division of Odebrecht, the same division that handled bribes for securing Odebrecht contract work in the Dominican Republic and other countries. Code names have been linked so far to three individuals — Andy Dauhajre, Gregory Salcedo and Jose Manuel Guzman Ibarra. Dauhajre and Salcedo have stated the payments received through the offshore companies were for their professional services.
8 July 2019