Dominican Republic senator wants out of world’s top corrupt list

Santo Domingo.- Senator and organization secretary of DominicanRepublic’s ruling Dominican party (PLD) Felix Bautista on Sunday demanded be toexcluded from the Transparency International’s list of people considered major symbolsworld corruption, claiming that Dominican justice dropped his case.

According to an TI online poll, Ukraine former president VictorYanukovich won with 27.4% of the vote, followed by Petrobras with 24.8%, formerPanama former president Ricardo Martinelli with 21.1% and Felix Bautista with20.4% (fourth), as persons, cases or entities that symbolize the world’sbiggest corruption.

In the letter to TI dated January 4 Bautista demands exclusionbecause Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court had opted not to prosecute.

Moreover, Acento.com.do reports that lawyers for the lawmakermet with TI counterpart in New York. It said TI decided to submit a series ofquestions and requests given to the Senator’s lawyers, to be answered and deliveredif possible, which hasn’t occurred thus far. “For example, the senator was askedto produce copies of his financial statements for tax purposes in the last 10years.”

The information was disclosed by Transparency International’srepresentative entity in Dominican Republic Citizen Participation (PC), on thewebsite http://www.pciudadana.org/

Origin of confrontation

The TI project to unmask the corrupt started last year andaims to make visible the great corruption and raise local and internationalawareness of the evil that affects all nations and protected by impunity inmany of them.

The voting began December 9, 2015 and ended on February 9 2016.

TI decided to elect nine of the 15 participants to advanceto the third stage, dubbed Time for Justice.

The selectees:

Senator Felix Bautista, of the Dominican Republic;

Akhmad Kadyrov, Chechnya;

FIFA, the world body Soccer;

Ricardo Martinelli, former president of Panama;

State of Delaware, USA;

Victor Yanukovich, past president of Ukraine;

Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, former president of Tunisia;

The political system of Lebanon;

Petrobras, the state/owned Brazilian oil company.

To pick them TU took into account the vote each scored butalso "the broad impact on human rights and the need to emphasize the lessvisible side of the large-scale corruption."