Report shows Electric Utility CEO should be indicted: Politico

Santo Domingo. – APD party president Max Puig on Sunday said the revelations in the report by the Punta Catalina power plant tender and contract investigative commission obliges the Justice Ministry to indict Electric Utility (CDEEE) CEO Rubén Jiménez Bichara.

The veteran politico said the commission’s report details a series of criminal actions that should lead to the official’s prosecution.

Puig said Jimenes Bichara illegally hired the firm Stanley Consultants, who appointed a Tenders Committee in violation of the law whose members. He said the move made the Committee subordinates of Stanley Consultants, which allowed it to handle the competition at its whim.

He said the report detail “the manipulations that took place in the tender process,” citing the failure to provide adequate information to the Committee’s two independent members, who were forced to resign.

It also refers to the invention of a virtual or ghost contestant, designed with the purpose of comparing their alleged prices with those offered by Odebrecht.

In Puig’s view, illegal actions to manipulate the bidding and awarding of the Punta Catalina contract are more than sufficient to bring Jiménez Bichara to justice.

The commission that investigated the tender called it “mostly legal,” which in Puig’s view shows that the war of the Punta Catalina contract was carried out, “violated the Law”. “The law is either enforced or not enforced; it is not complied with half way or more or less.”

Interviewed on channel 4 CERTV, Puig said although the report’s authors avoid speaking clearly about overvaluations and bribes, those practices “are described in the report they wrote,” which paves the way for “Jiménez Bichara and his accomplices” to be indicted for the illegal action they committed to the detriment of the Dominican people.