Santo Domingo, RD
The Public Ministry asked the judge of the Judicial Office of Permanent Care Services of Santiago the declaration of “complex case” and pretrial detention for 18 months against 21 of those arrested in Operation Falcon.
According to the MP, the alleged organized crime network already for 2012 trafficked at least 2,500 kilos of cocaine a week and came to accumulate investments of the laundering of assets for at least 10 billion pesos.
The defendants are María Olimpia Tavares Rodríguez (Oil and / or the Princess); Juan Maldonado Castro (Martial and / or The Leader), Víctor Elpidio Altagracia Paulino Herrera (La Grossa), Luis Daniel Nieves Batista, Adolfo Antonio Torres Sanabia (Tony and / or president), Julio César Jiménez Talavera (Dominican-Venezuelan) and Juan Baptista Carpio Reynoso.
Also, José Alejandro de la Cruz Morales, Omar (La Moña), Raúl Antonio Castro Mota, Yana Iris Maldonado Castro, Angélica María Maldonado Peralta, Lenin Bladimir Torres Bé, Marisol López Ceballos, Delfina Assumpció Polanco, Ana Margarita Coll Mart, Erich Fernando Meléndez Gómez, José Miguel Castillo Taveras (Migue), Elva Teresa Polanco: Juan Carlos Durán Rodríguez, Javier Antonio Tavares Rodríguez and Felipe Espino Germán.
Santiago’s prosecutor, Osvaldo Bonilla Hiraldo, filed with other prosecutors the request for a coercive measure against the defendants who, according to estimates by national and international authorities, laundered large sums of money within a network criminal in which “they trafficked hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs to Europe, the United States and Puerto Rico, mobilizing more than $ 500 million as a result of this criminal activity.”
The Public Ministry reported, in a preliminary way, that more than 100 vehicles and more than 20 luxury watches were occupied by the network. Also, more than $ 4.3 million in cash.
Investigators continue to work in Operation Falcon in which they already practiced more than 100 home violations, during operations led by Deputy Attorney General Yeni Berenice Reynoso, head of the General Directorate of Persecution of the Public Ministry, in coordination with agents of the National Directorate of Drug Control (DNCD), under the direct command of its president, Vice Admiral José Manuel Cabrera Ulloa.
Preliminary information from the Public Ministry points out that the drug trafficking network operated even before 2012 and that there is evidence that from 2017 it increased its operations. “Approximately 8,500 kilos of cocaine were confiscated between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, which shows the climate of impunity in which they carried out their criminal operations,” the coercion request says.
The criminal network, which had its base of operations mainly in Santiago, carried and trafficked high-caliber firearms, even only allowed to state security agencies. For its dismantling, the Dominican authorities have the international cooperation, especially with the Drug Control Administration (DEA).
Prosecutor Bonilla Hiraldo highlighted the hard work of the team of prosecutors and agents of the DNCD and other state security agencies.
“This is a large, complex operation, in which the Public Ministry is putting all its efforts to dismantle a criminal network that trafficked tons of cocaine and laundered at least 10 billion pesos, of so we are confident that the courts will also act in the interests of the whole of society, ”he said.