Ten defendants admit guilt in Calamar scheme

The head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Pepca), Wilson Camacho, informed last night that ten of the 20 accused in the Calamar case admitted guilt in the illicit acts attributed to them by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

They are Angel Lockward, Santiago Moquete Sosa Ortiz, Alejandro Constanzo Sosa, Marcial Reyes, Ana Linda Fernandez, Emil Jose Fernandez, Oscar Chalas, Rafael Parmenio Rodriguez, Agustin Mejia and Victor Matias Encarnacion, who committed to collaborating with the Public Prosecutor in the continuation of the investigation of the case.

According to Camacho, the group not only told the court how the criminal network operated, which they said “behaved like a mafia,” but they went beyond several points of those investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

“We must affirm that what has happened today in court is simply and plainly amazing for three reasons: first, 10 defendants have admitted the facts before the Court, which constitutes 50% of the defendants and 100% of the defendants who spoke today,” said the head of the Pepca.

He said that what happened is a direct consequence of “the forcefulness of the investigation, and the intelligence of the defenses to realize that the evidence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is irrefutable, the reason for which he affirmed they reached an agreement with the prosecution,

He indicated that the admissions of the ten accused also corroborate all the lines presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in this process.

“All this, together with the evidence presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, should lead to the conclusion that the conclusions we have presented to the court should be accepted and the coercive measures we have requested should be imposed,” added Camacho.

He informed that based on the declarations of the ten accused admitting their responsibility in the illegal acts of which they are charged, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the court to impose house arrest, prohibition to leave the country, and different economic guarantees as coercive measures for them. For the remaining ten, 18 months of preventive detention.

“From this moment on, and this is something that the accused have even told the court, they are willing to continue collaborating with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is a matter that the Public Prosecutor’s Office will handle in the future according to the dynamics of the investigation,” he said.

But he also added that the ten would have to return the money received illicitly, which, he said, has always been a goal of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Camacho pointed out that the Public Prosecutor’s Office will continue investigating, “and we will bring before the courts all the people that we have evidence that they have committed illicit acts; this has been our action in all the cases, and in this one, there is no reason for it to be an exception.”

What did they do?
The first one who asked for the floor to open up before the examining magistrate Kenya Romero was Lockward, of whom the MP says in the Calamar case that “the falsification of public deeds and the use of falsified authentic acts” constituted “one of the fraudulent maneuvers used in a recurrent manner by the accused Ángel Gilberto Lockward Mella y Asociados to process the determinations of heirs of the expropriation cases that legally were spent through him and his law firm.”

Moquete Ortiz, who, according to his lawyer Yoerikson Alcantara, committed to returning RD$30 million, says that he associated with the investigated Ramon David Hernandez and Yahaira Encarnacion Brito to transform the companies Finca de recreo Villa Mella and Desarrollos Rurales, and pass them to his name.

It also says that they gave to the criminal structure allegedly headed by the former Minister of Finance the sum of RD$296,637,125.29 through credit assignments signed at the Lockward Office.

Of Constanzo Sosa, who, according to his lawyers, admitted to being a loan name for the network, the MP says he was dedicated to identifying assets that the public utility had declared to charge the State illegally.