Mounting support for top Prosecutor a stunning setback for ex President

Santo Domingo.- Business leaders from Santo Domingo, Santiago and La Vega on Tuesday joined the mounting support for Justice minister Francisco Dominguez’s fight to prosecute senator Felix Bautista, a close collaborator of former president Leonel Fernandez, and a stunning setback to his plan to regain power.

In addition to the case against Bautista, another close collaborator of Fernandez, former Public Works minister Victor Diaz Rua also faces embezzlement charges, and prompted Herrera Industries and Santo Domingo Province Association president Victor Castro to call the former president a “thief.”

The business leaders said Dominguez’s actions to prosecute the lawmaker on embezzlement charges shouldn’t be politicized, since government corruption is a cancer that has done much harm to the nation.

"We’re here to signal our support and solidarity to what you’re doing and encourage you to continue the processes with transparency and firmness as is being carried out. We hope you don’t come across external forces who seek to avert due process and we expect that you will do so as we are here to support you to prevent it from being politicized," Dominican Republic Industries Association (AIRD) president Ligia Bonetti told Dominguez during the visit to his office.

Among the business leaders present figured National Business Council (Conep) executive Marisol Vicens, who called corruption, “a cancer, which has diverted funds from education, health benefits of the Dominican people and it is time that society needs the authorities to play their role.