Lawyer questions record in Operation Cobra and denies fraud or money laundering

Santo Domingo.- The lawyer Carlos Balcácer, legal representative of the accused Rafael Luis Martínez Báez, in the Cobra Operation case, questioned this Tuesday the way in which the Public Ministry is building the accusations. Upon leaving the court, Balcácer stated that the process should be handled with greater responsibility due to the relevance of the issue linked to the National Health Insurance (Senasa).

“It is important that all actors in the system understand that the case is serious, the Senasa issue is serious, and we understand that the first one who has to understand that situation is the Public Ministry, not to launch frivolous accusations, nor to trivialize the accusations,” he expressed.

The jurist insisted that within the file there are those who, according to him, cannot be attributed the crimes mentioned by the Attorney General’s Office. He assured that some of the accused have not incurred money laundering or fraud, as the accusation indicates. “There are people, without having to define what defense it is, that it is not true that they laundered assets with Senasa’s money, it is not true. There I have not seen that the scam is configured either. One has to be very careful with the elements of scams and infractions, very careful.” The Public Ministry’s file establishes that Rafael Luis Martínez Báez participated in fraud and scam maneuvers in the health sector through the company Grupo Siulrod S.R.L., of which he is not listed as a shareholder, but he did act, according to the Pepca, as its “public face“.

You may be interested in: Pepca says Operation Cobra: the most serious corruption case

The document indicates that Martínez Báez allegedly defrauded Nigerian doctor Emmanuel Chinweoke Aja of $40,000, to whom he offered an alliance for telemedicine services between Siulrod/MyCare and the ECA Advanced Medical Center medical center. According to the record, Martínez Báez used as persuasion a trophy received for his work in telemedicine and his relationship with the former director of Senasa, Santiago Hazim, also charged. The accusation alleges that, taking advantage of his family connection with Santiago Hazim, Martínez Báez secured the preferential assignment of a medical service provider code, which allowed Grupo Siulrod to sign a contract with Senasa in June 2021 and an addendum in December of the same year to operate the MyCare program.