Top road toll scandal continues, group wants answers

Santo Domingo. – Justice and Transparency Foundation (FJT) president Trajano Potentini yesterday called the Government’s 30 year concession contract with roads builder and concessioner company Codacsa, “leonine, harmful and injurious” to the national interest.

The demand from the FJT is the latest chapter in the Codacsa toll collection scandal, and adds to a similar demand several months ago by Public Works minister Victor Diaz Rua.

Potentini railed what he called Congress’s complicity to approve and validate various contracts, and warned that they carve up and strip the State of its assets. “If the State remains with its arms crossed, the people will have to rescue their patrimony.”

He noted that three years ago the Chamber of Deputies launched an investigation and sought to revise the Codacsa contract, but its result have yet to be disclosed, despite concluding a report, “that we would call ghost, because it isn’t known either.”

The company Codacsa, mostly of Spanish capital, collects and manages the toll at the Las Americas toll plaza, the country’s most profitable.