New York: The executive director of the Project We Demand Respect for the Diaspora (PRO-ERD), Esteban Cabrera, said this Good Friday that this organization would request the US Department of Justice to consider placing legislative officials, ministers, judges, police, military, former Dominican presidents, business people, and politicians involved in acts of administrative corruption on the terrorist list, persecute them, extradite them to the US and remove the stolen money from the coffers of the Dominican State. “When public money is stolen, it can be considered terrorism against the State, against the country. Because with each stolen peso, one more child is left helpless and abandoned as a social outcast.”
He recalled that the Dominican diaspora is the fourth majority in the United States, with more than 2.5 million Dominicans living legally in the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Boston, and Florida, not counting those who live illegally, which is why the Insecurity and instability problems that occur in the Dominican Republic are reflected in one way or another in the United States.
“The United States must consider administrative corruption in the Dominican Republic almost as a national security problem,” said Esteban Cabrera, to later add: “just because of the Tour of Mexico, Dominicans who are fleeing the situation of poverty created by corruption in the country were hundreds of thousands, of which the US already has 25,000 processed for deportation and counting, which represents a great problem for this country,” said Cabrera.
“Administrative corruption has taken over the official levels of the country, which generates irregular migratory pressure because Dominicans are desperate, without hope, in a failed state, where politicians have allied with corrupt businessmen to steal public resources, which which translates into exposed misery, citizen insecurity, increases in the prices of the basic basket and concern of families,” added Esteban Cabrera.
“They have created entrenched mafias in the Dominican State. Since 2020, the Specialized Prosecutor for Administrative Corruption (PEPCA) has prosecuted some 20 former and current government officials. They are accused of having stolen from the Dominican State a sum greater than 30 billion Dominican pesos, however, to date no one has been convicted of these crimes, ”he warned.
“Corruption in the Dominican Republic has an estimated annual cost of 30% of the general Budget. Among the embezzlements are overvalued purchases, sales, commission payment contracts, and undervalued and graced loans to promote loyalty. Tax evasion is added, and corruption exceeds 30% of the annual Public Budget.
The United States has fought fiercely to improve the laws and codes of the Dominican penal system. Even so, it has failed because the penalty application does not exist in a rotten judicial system, permeated by politicians and magistrates kidnapped by particular and partisan interests. Therefore, more binding actions are needed against these mafia sectors, such as applying the same treatment given to drug traffickers, who are persecuted in their own countries and extradited to the United States, where their money is taken, they are convicted, they are awarded to them – the winning complaint is imposed on them, and their mafia structures are destroyed. The same must be done with corrupt politicians, judges, mafia business people, police officers, and Dominican military leaders. All those believed to be above the law in the DR should be tried as criminals in the US.
