RD$250M embezzlement case opens a Municipal can of worms

Santo Domingo.- Hatred and passions are behind "certain people’s ability to frivolously and frightfully detract others," the example being Humberto Salazar’s statement calling La Altagracia senator Amable Aristy, a "corrupt traitor” and “jail meat.”

Aristy’s attorney Julio Cury made the statement Thursday, and revealed that Salazar’s wife and son figure on the Dominican Municipal League’s payroll with a RD$40,000 and 25,000 salary respectively, without working.

The figures are the latest salvoes in Aristy’s pitched battle to stay out of jail on charges he embezzled more than RD$300 million during the more than eight years as head of the anachronistic and nepotism-riddled League, one of the last remnants of Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship.

"I’m awe struck by observing that despite the economic crisis which ravages us and the heartbreaking high jobless rate, there are those who take advantage of their relationships to place their relatives into parasitic payrolls," the attorney said.

He called the minority PRSC party leader’s attitude “deplorable,” noting that amid the situation Aristy is going through, "Salazar takes advantage to bark at him, as if he was perhaps a beacon of honesty or midwife of public honor."

"If Salazar was grateful or if he had the memory to remember the occasion when Aristy allegedly helped him with the Agency of Customs, have kept his mouth shut," Cury said, but didn’t specify.

He added called hypocrites the “personalities who sell themselves as moralists, when we all know they are capable of selling their body and soul for a handful of pesos.”