Ex official in RD$42.0M fraud case gets 4 years in prison

SANTO DOMINGO.- A National District Court found three defendants guilty of defrauding taxpayers out of more than RD$52.0 million through canceled Blackouts Reduction Program (PRA), for which its then director Marcos Lara Lorenzo will spend four years in prison.

3rd Collegiate Court judges Alina Mora de Marmol, Natividad Ramona Santos and Rafael Pacheco also levied a RD$1.0 million fine against Lara, and also sentenced ex PRA officials Sauris Rodriguez and Juan Portalatín, to two and three years in prison and fined RD$1.0 million and RD$500,000 respectively.

The three will serve their sentence at Najayo prison, while Nicolas Núñez Conception was found not guilty on lack of evidence in the case prosecuted by Francisco García Rosa and Narciso Escaño, of the Justice Ministry’s Anticorruption Department.