Spanish
Santo Domingo.- Judge Altagracia Ramírez, of the Fourth Instruction Court of the National District, ordered this Friday the opening to trial on the merits against the former Minister of Finance, Donald Guerrero, considering that there is sufficient evidence for him to answer before a court for the accusations made in the Calamar case file.
The decision was made after concluding the preliminary phase of the judicial process, in which the court evaluated the accusation presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the arguments of the defendants' defenses. With the opening of the trial, the magistrate determined that the evidence presented warrants being debated in an oral and public trial stage.
According to the accusation, Guerrero is among the main individuals accused of being part of an alleged network of administrative corruption that would have operated from different state institutions to manage irregular payments related to expropriations of land declared of public utility and other mechanisms that, according to the accusing body, caused multimillion-dollar losses to the Dominican State.
During the reading of the decision, the judge explained that at this stage it is not appropriate to establish guilt or innocence, but rather to determine whether the evidence provided reasonably supports the accusation in a trial on the merits.
The Public Ministry maintains that the investigated structure would have mobilized billions of pesos through fraudulent maneuvers, including irregular payments, association of wrongdoers, embezzlement, bribery, coalition of officials, and money laundering, among other crimes charged to several of the defendants.
For his part, Guerrero's defense rejected the accusations and argued during the preliminary hearing that the evidence presented does not demonstrate the participation of his client in the events attributed by the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca).
However, the magistrate concluded that the elements incorporated into the file are sufficient to overcome the intermediate phase of the process and that the controversies raised by the parties must be addressed during the trial on the merits.
The Calamar case involves dozens of former officials and private individuals accused of being part of an alleged structure that, according to the Public Ministry, would have generated an economic loss of over 19 billion pesos through irregular payments and other illicit operations linked to state resources.
