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BiggerDefense seeks to overturn 18-month detention of ex-Senasa director
Santo Domingo.- The defense of former National Health Insurance (Senasa) director Santiago Hazim has appealed the decision ordering 18 months of pretrial detention, arguing that the ruling violated his dignity, privacy, and presumption of innocence.
You might be interested in reading: Former SENASA Director Santiago Hazim sent to 18 months of pretrial detention in major corruption case
Hazim’s lawyer, Miguel Valerio, confirmed this Tuesday that the appeal was filed with the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals of the National District, contending that Judge Rigoberto Sena’s decision was based on personal moral and ethical judgments rather than legal reasoning. According to the defense, the ruling lacked proper legal motivation and included biblical and literary references unrelated to the purpose of coercive measures.
Valerio maintained that the judge’s arguments referring to alleged greed, betrayal, and moral disloyalty do not constitute valid legal grounds and are disconnected from the evidentiary elements of the case. He also argued that the decision violates Hazim’s right to health, as it allegedly prevents him from continuing medical treatment for a serious illness.
The defense emphasized that coercive measures are intended to prevent a defendant’s flight or the destruction of evidence, objectives that, according to Valerio, were not adequately addressed in the ruling. He claimed that by failing to base the decision on these criteria, the court disregarded Hazim’s rights and dignity.
Hazim and six other defendants are accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of participating in an alleged embezzlement of more than RD$15 billion at Senasa and were ordered to serve 18 months of pretrial detention. Three additional defendants were placed under less restrictive measures, including electronic monitoring, travel bans, and mandatory periodic reporting, with their attorneys stating that they have cooperated with the investigation.
Do not overturn!
I’m not Dominican nor born in the DR so don’t have a full backstory but what I always wonder is why it takes multiple years to bring a case to trial – even if one is labeled ‘complex’. With the passage of time, memories fade, people (potential witnesses) move on with their lives and disappear, papers and other evidence can be lost etc. Also, the collective memory of the incident (and subsequent outrage) become muted leading to cases you never hear about again and that can lead to the opportunity to work a ‘quiet deal’ with with the judiciary to get a lenient sentence that won’t cause the same public outrage had it occurred earlier. Why such the long delay?
And I do support the idea of preventative detention (many of these cases seem to involve the theft of large sums of State money thus flight risk becomes a very real risk) but it the long preventative detention delay weren’t there, I assume there’d be less reason for the accused to challenge the preventative detention.
By way of example of what I’m referring to about never hearing about cases again, I recall a few years back of a case concerning fraudulent lottery results where they accused the hostess, others at the lottery agency, even the blind person who picked the numbers! It was major news at the time but then like all things, long preventative detention and you never hear about it again. What ever happened in that case? Or the ones where small town mayors or other officials have large amounts of unexplainable wealth completely unaligned what they could have possibly accumulated from their official positions. Try these quickly and move on. Make an example of them before “collective forget” sets in.
Bring forward a law that the status of every case involving corruption of a public official is required to be posted on a publicly-accessible government website for all to view and be able to track. When you shine the light in the dark corners, the cockroaches don’t have a place to hide.