Dominican Republic Greens call power plant a ‘crime scene’

Santo Domingo.-  The Green March on  Monday demanded the “immediate” start of a criminal investigation into the tender, contract, financing and construction of the controversial  Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant, two days after a special commission reported that it found no evidence of graft in the process.

It called the commission, its actions and its report, “attacks on the rule of law, good governance, good justice, the division of powers and all logic of criminal investigation in complex cases.”

The Green March said there’s a marked interest “to cover up and protect Danilo Medina’s administration and a criminal network to the detriment of the Dominican people.”

It cited commissioner Servio Tulio Castaños, president of the Institutionalism and Justice Foundation, who in March also requested an investigation of the companies which took part in the tender, and the indictments in the Odebrecht case as well.

For the Green March, as a member of the commission, Castaños had warned of the urgency for a Justice Ministry investigating into Punta Catalina.

“Servio Tulio (Castaños) says it, the Justice minister (Jean A. Rodriguez) says it in writing, business leaders who participated in the tender say it, Odebrecht acknowledges (admitting paying US$92 million in bribes) and denounced by several of the most important specialists in the country: Punta Catalina is a crime scene and must be investigated criminally, not from a cosmetic commission named by a suspect (Medina) in the case,” the greens said in a statement.