Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Subero Isa told reporters that international collaboration should not be hinged on who the international community sees as the guilty parties. This was Subero Isa?s response to various statements from ambassadors and foreign ministers who declared that the severest punishments should be meted out to those who committed the bank fraud that set off the current national crisis. The visibly upset magistrate said, ?Absolutely no one can tell us who is guilty and who is not guilty, and what is the measure by which we shall weigh the guilty if not by the law itself?? Subero Isa went on to say that the corrupt are those who have been convicted and that Dominican justice starts with a presumption of innocence.
As reported in Hoy, the chief justice was referring to comments made by departing European Union representative Miguel Amado, Under Secretary of the US Treasury John Taylor and other diplomats who have demanded just punishment for those involved in the banking fraud. Last Thursday, Amado said that for the country to recover confidence and stability in the banking system, it needed rigorous discipline in government finances and the end of corruption, political patronage and ?economic banditry.? Elena Brineman of USAID leveled her guns at the problem and said the country needed the trials of the accused to continue in order to maintain access to international financial assistance. Brineman, when talking to reporters from Hoy last Thursday, reminded that the entire international economic community was watching the developments in these cases. Even Giorgio Sfara, the normally reticent Italian ambassador, said that he thought the country needed to fulfill its side of the IMF Accords and punish all perpetrators of public and private corruption in order to receive international financial help. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court announced it is investigating several judges at the behest of the United States government. The Diario Libre says that Subero Isa ordered a report to be drawn up with regard to several judges who presided over certain drug-related cases. Subero Isa said that this report will look into the case files of these judges, but that the investigation would be ?an act of transparency, as we are obliged to divulge all this information.?
The chief justice is a former legal advisor on the payroll of Baninter, one of the collapsed banks.