Santo Domingo.- Antinarcotics (DNCD) agents arrested an airplane pilot and mechanic Thursday night, charged with forming part of the international drug ring linked to airline owner Rafael Rosado Fermin and others who allegedly bought aircraft abroad to ship cocaine from South America.
It said the pilot-mechanic Guillermo Perez Perdomo is the registered owner of the aircraft #N4592A, seized recently in Venezuela, where it was taken from Dominican Republic with an altered load capacity, and bigger fuel tanks for long range flights.
"This man, a veteran pilot and airplane mechanic native of Nagua, was involved in this network as a buyer of foreign aircraft to subsequently bring them to the Dominican Republic, but in fact he’s a figurehead of the leaders of that network, especially Sergio Gómez Díaz," said DNCD spokesman Roberto Lebron.
He said several military and Police officers and enlistees as well as employees of various airports are part of the network, which helped planes land and take-off from the terminals at Puerto Plata, Constanza and El Higüero. “That group has been able to launder tens of millions of dollars from drug trafficking operations.”