On a local television show yesterday morning, Monsignor Agripino Nunez Collado told host Haime Thomas Frias Carela, just what happened regarding his visits to Hipolito Mejia and Leonel Fernandez last week. Newspaper reports had said that the monsignor, well known as a mediator, had taken messages from President Fernandez to former chief executive Mejia, asking for a lessening of political pressures in exchange for certain immunities in some of the corruption cases still pending. The monsignor was adamant, according to La Informacion, in his clarification.
According to the rector of the PUCMM university, on the 15th of March, he received a letter from Sergio Grullon, the former Presidential Minister, asking him, the monsignor, to set a date when he could receive documents referring to some greenhouses in Jarabacoa, along with all of the paperwork and proofs of ownership. With the letter in hand, Nunez Collado said he went to the Presidential Palace where he talked to Presidential Minister Danilo Medina, and Medina told him that “nobody was questioning the ownership of those greenhouses.”
Then, last Thursday, after a meeting with possible investors, the prelate talked to President Fernandez who reaffirmed what Medina had said. Nunez then asked if he could take that message to Mejia, and the President said yes. That same evening, by himself, Nunez Collado went to Mejia’s house where they talked for an hour.
During the conversation, as a personal effort on his part, Nunez Collado said he asked Mejia to “temper the tone of the current political debates, and the country would be grateful to not have more things to worry about.” Monsignor Nunez told Haime Thomas that he would never have attempted to offer any immunity for corrupt acts, and that the issue never came up.