Judge Jose Alejandro Vargas made history on Tuesday, 8 December 2020 in the concluding statements during the opening of the first trial regarding corruption in government filed by the new Justice Department team . He presented a clear summary of why he was imposing criminal coercive measures or not on the 11 government officials, contractors and alleged front men accused of embezzlement and complicity with government officials to commit multi-billion fraud to the state.
The judge sat on the previous Sunday and Monday for almost 30 hours of expositions by the prosecutors and defense lawyers and the accused that turned the opening of the Anti-Octopus Operation corruption case into a preliminary hearing rather than one to establish coercive measures. The name of the case comes from the widespread and diverse contracting operations of the main accused, today billionaire Juan Alexis Medina Sánchez, brother of former President Danilo Medina.
On Tuesday evening, the judge gave his preliminary opinion on the crimes as presented by the prosecutors and the defense. He accepted the request by the state prosecutors Yeni Berenice Reynoso and Wilson Camacho of the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Agency (Pepca) to declare the case complex, giving the prosecution 18 months rather than a year to complete the investigations and present the cases. He ordered the arrest of seven of the 11, home arrests for three and released one. The younger brother of former President Danilo Medina Sánchez, Juan Alexis Medina Sánchez is ordered to preventive custody at the Najayo jail in San Cristóbal. His sister Carmen Magalys Medina Sánchez is ordered to house arrest with electronic bracelets and surveillance by the Justice Department.
Others sent to await the trial development at the San Cristóbal jail are accused Francisco Pagán Rodríguez and Aquiles Alejandro Christopher Sánchez, former general director and director of supervision, respectively, of the Office of Supervisory Engineers of State Works (OISOE); also the former director of the Patrimonial Fund of the Capitalized State Enterprises (Fonper), Fernando Rosa.
The court ordered the defendants Julián Esteban Suriel Suazo, who was found to have an illegal weapons arsenal at his home, José Dolores Santana Carmona and Wacal Vernavel Méndez Pineda, to serve their three-month preventive detention in the San Pedro de Macorís jail. The prosecution accuses these of being front men for Juan Alexis Medina.
Lorenzo Wilfredo (Freddy) Hidalgo Núñez, former Minister of Health, was ordered to serve three months of house arrest, with electronic bracelet under the Justice Department’s surveillance.
In addition, he ordered that both the sister of President Medina, Carmen Magalys and former Health minister Hidalgo Núñez will have to present bail of RD$10 million and cannot leave the country.
The judge ordered that former national controller Rafael Antonio Germosén Andújar, serve house arrest, with electronic bracelets, Justice Department surveillance and impediment to leave the country.
He required that accused businessman Domingo Antonio Santiago Muñoz have only the obligation to appear periodically before the court during the trial.
In his explanations, the judge said that Juan Alexis Medina Sánchez was the sparkle in the eye of former President Danilo Medina (“niña linda”). The judge said that he sees the case more than political as a family affair gone bad. He said that then President Medina always kept his distance from his younger brother’s affairs, but that from the explanations he gets the impression that Alexis Medina was more in control than the government officials he dealt with. The judge described as “notorious” the business dealings of Alexis Medina with the state.
In his reasonings for applying preventive measures to the accused, judge Vargas responded to the defense arguments of Juan Alexis Medina’s young lawyer, Eduardo Núñez Guerrero. Núñez Guerrero spoke at around 1am on Monday in defense of his client, arguing that the prosecutor’s accusations could not be used to send his client to preventive custody because he was not a government official. That evening, the arguments were not able to be rebutted by adjunct prosecutor Yeni Berenice Reynoso. Yet on the next day, Judge Vargas argued that the evidence of fraud against the state presented was sufficient to send Medina to await the development of the trial in jail.
The accused have 10 days to appeal the preventive custody measures.
The judge ordered the trial to begin at the Third Instruction Court of the National District.
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8 December 2020