Caribbean & Central America - May 2017 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The head of the Dominican Republic’s attorney general’s office (PGR), Jean Alain Rodríguez, arrived in Washington DC on 3 May to meet his US counterpart, Jeff Sessions. The two officials were scheduled to discuss cooperation in the fight against transnational crime. But the main topic of the meeting appeared to be the ongoing investigations in the Dominican Republic (DR) into the regional government corruption case involving Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht. Sessions signalled his support for Rodríguez during the meeting, endorsing the PGR’s handling of the case. This provided a significant boon for Rodríguez and the government led by President Danilo Medina, who are under growing domestic and international pressure over the case [RC-17-04].

The Medina administration – and Rodríguez in particular – have been under intense pressure from local anti-corruption group ‘Marcha Verde’, which has called for the attorney general’s dismissal due to the lack of progress made in the Odebrecht investigations so far (in which dozens of suspects have been quizzed but to date not a single person has been arrested, much less charged). But despite several recent sizable protest marches by Marcha Verde, the plodding nature of the investigations look set to continue. On 25 April Rodríguez declared that the PGR was still awaiting more evidence from Brazilian prosecutors before it could proceed further. The announcement heaped the pressure on the Medina government, which faces allegations that the PGR is dragging its feet in the investigations because these implicate senior members of the ruling Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) – of which Rodríguez himself is a member.

Suspicions about this were exacerbated when on 20 April a local judge approved a plea-bargaining deal struck by the PGR and Odebrecht under which the firm agreed to pay US$184m in compensation for the damages caused by the alleged US$92m in bribes it paid to government officials in the DR in 2001-2014. Odebrecht also agreed to reveal the names of the people to whom it paid bribes, and the PGR argues that this could be critical for clearing up the case. Marcha Verde has rejected this, arguing that the final economic damages figure produced by Odebrecht corruption in the DR may be even higher than the agreed compensation amount. Marcha Verde demanded that the PGR conclude its investigations before any plea-bargaining deal is signed to ensure that it is not detrimental to the Dominican state; and it challenged the deal on these grounds in the courts but this has now been dismissed.

Adding to this pressure, on 2 May a group of civil-society organisations led by Participación Ciudadana (PC), the local branch of international NGO, Transparency International, filed a formal complaint calling for the PGR to investigate whether Odebrecht had made donations to President Medina’s 2016 re-election campaign. DR electoral law prohibits political parties and candidates from receiving donations from foreign individuals or firms. Evidence that Odebrecht provided irregular campaign financing to leading politicians as part of the corruption scheme has been uncovered in other Latin American countries. The PC is calling for an investigation to determine whether this took place in the DR, even if Medina has publicly denied that his campaign received any irregular financing (see sidebar).

Despite these concerns, Sessions offered his support for Rodríguez and the PGR. A PGR statement released after the meeting said it had been very positive and the two had agreed to collaborate in the Odebrecht investigations given that Odebrecht also signed a plea-bargaining deal with US law enforcement in February. The statement adds that the PGR hopes that this collaboration will help expedite its investigations and clear up the case given that following the approval of the plea-bargaining deal it negotiated with Odebrecht, the firm has pledged to provide it with the names of all those to whom it paid bribes by 19 May.

• Irregular financing suspicions

Suspicions that Medina’s re-election campaign may have received irregular campaign financing centres on his links to a public relations adviser, João Santana, who has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement in the Odebrecht corruption scheme in his native Brazil. However, in testimony given to Brazil’s supreme electoral court (TSE) on 4 May, Santana said that while he negotiated financing from Odebrecht for electoral campaigns in Brazil and across Latin America, Odebrecht never financed any elections in the DR – remarks that unsurprisingly were seized upon by President Medina.