Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa said that most of the funds borrowed by the Mejia government did not enter the treasury. He said that while the country has to pay back these loans, all that it received was overpriced machinery, most of which was stockpiled and never used. He made these claims on the D Agenda TV program on Channel 11 produced by journalist Hector Herrera Cabral. The minister said that former government officials and lobbyists received ‘juicy’ commissions for these loans.
Bengoa added that 60% of the US$4 billion borrowed during the Mejia administration was arranged with private commercial banks. The funds, according to Bengoa, were not spent on improving living conditions for the Dominican people, but instead on purchasing buses, airplanes, helicopters, ships and hospital equipment at inflated prices, often without knowing what the equipment was intended for.
Former secretary of the Presidency, Rafael Calderon, asked Bengoa to name the people who benefited from these commissions.