Notorious Dominican government agency was a loan sharks´ laird

Santo Domingo.- Oneof the basic scams which the ring of loan sharks operating within the State WorksSupervisory Engineers Office (OISOE) to extort huge amounts of money was tomake it hard for contractors and engineers to get paid, forcing them to borrowin addition to ballooning the budgets.

The revelation by DominicanEngineers, Architects and Surveyors Guild (CODIA) regional director architectAntonio José Cid came from his deposition to prosecutors two weeks aftercontractor David Rodriguez took his own life reportedly over desperation fromloans. "They tended to obstruct payments for people to despair."

The group allegedlyled by Alejandro de los Santos, head of OISOE´s School Buildings Dept.,constantly threatened to strip the contractors of the work to extort money, affirmedCid. "They use the site orders for maneuvers in which they took advantageof the increases, most of which were overvalued."

"David´s work was11 million (pesos) and ended with a budget of 20 million, they made him signtwo contracts offering sections and deposited in his account the amount ofthose sections, eventually making a small disbursement of cash but the agreedamount of the money was never deposited," the professional said.

According to the casefile cited by elnacional.com.do, the credit line with the Reservas Bank ismandatory, and if they didn’t accept it the disbursements were denied. "Itwas mandatory to take loans with the bank," said Cid.