Working overtime, state prosecutors presented the formal accusation against former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez and accomplices to the First Instruction Court of the National District near midnight of Saturday, 2 July 2022, the deadline to do so. The Public Prosecutor’s Office presented the indictment against those involved in the so-named Medusa Operation. The prosecutors identify the case as the most extensive corruption case ever prosecuted in Dominican history for the number of people and the diversity of social, political and economic sectors involved.
El Dia reports that around 60 persons have been indicted, up from the original nine who had received preventive custody in the case. El Dia reports that its source said the accusatory file is around 12,000 pages long, including 1,500 pages of accusations. The rest is the presentation of evidence and annexes.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has not gone public with the names of the new defendants.
In addition to former prosecutor Rodríguez Sánchez, the former director of Information and Communication Technology of the Attorney General Office, Javier Alejandro Forteza Ibarra; former administrative director, Jonathan Joel Rodriguez Imbert, and Alfredo Alexander Solano, former deputy administrative director, are being held in preventive custody.
Jenny Marte Peña, former Project Manager, is under house arrest, and former deputy administrative director Altagracia Guillén Calzado, and Rafael Antonio Mercedes Marte, former accounting director.
The process is also being followed against one of the main advisors of the former attorney general, the media adviser Miguel José Moya, who was allowed to post bail.
Also involved in the Medusa case is Rafael Stefano Canó Sacco, the former chief of staff of former Attorney General Rodríguez Sánchez, who was arrested in Spain last year and is requested in extradition by the Dominican Republic.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office says the Medusa Operation looks into the workings of a criminal network of corruption that would have operated from the Attorney General’s Office and which, according to preliminary estimates given by the investigators, defrauded the Dominican state of more than six billion pesos.
The charges include coalition of officials, prevarication, association of evildoers and swindling against the state, embezzlement, crimes, high-tech crimes and money laundering in jail construction and operation.
Read more in Spanish:
El Caribe
El Dia
El Nuevo Diario
4 July 2022