The Police has identified a man linked to convicted drug capo Jose Figueroa Agosto, and who had been extradited to the United States on drug charges as 44-year old Yubel Enrique Mendez Mendez (Oreganito), one of two men who were injured in an incident in the Plaza Lama parking lot on Santo Domingo’s Av. Winston Churchill yesterday afternoon, Thursday, 7 May 2015. The other man who was injured was one of the shopping center security guards, 45-year old Milan Cortorreal.
El Dia reports that the authorities did not know that Mendez had returned until he was injured in what is suspected to have been an attempted murder by contract killers. The newspaper says that Mendez is the convicted drug dealer known to have accumulated the largest fortune, estimated at more than RD$10 billion. He was extradited to the United States in December 2010 for his links to the drug network of convicted capos Jose David Figueroa Agosto and Angel Ayala Vasquez. In the Dominican Republic he ran a plantain farm in Azua and construction businesses as fronts, based in the province of Monte Plata. At the time of his arrest in the Dominican Republic in 2009, the authorities found his original National Drug Control Agency (DNCD) case file in his possession.
El Dia says that Yubel Enrique Mendez Mendez is the second extradited capo to return to the Dominican Republic without prior notification to the authorities. The case against him was heard in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the same court that heard the case against Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo, who also returned to the Dominican Republic without prior notification to Dominican authorities, according to a report in El Dia. As reported, he reached an agreement with the US judiciary for a reduced sentence of 4.5 years in the United States.
A Police spokesman said that the incident occurred when three unknown assailants tried to force Mendez into a vehicle. Mendez had just visited a bank branch at the shopping center. The men were injured when security guards at the mall noticed the struggle. The three assailants fled from the scene, abandoning their vehicle. The Police said that the vehicle had previously been reported as stolen.
PN confirma herido en incidente parqueo de Plaza Lama es reconocido narcotraficante