The continuation of the Odebrecht case trial is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. today, in which six defendants face charges of receiving a $ 92 million bribe from the Brazilian company to award them works contracts from the Dominican state.
The hearing, led by Judges Jissel Naranjo, Tania Yunes and Gisselle Méndez, will continue with the appearance of Mauricio Dantas Bezerra, Odebrecht’s legal director in the country, who in his testimony last Friday explained how the company carried out payments to third parties for to obtain state works contracts.
Dantas Bezerra explained that these payments were made through the “Structured Operations” department, which was referred to during the trial in Brazil as the “bribery department”.
He stated that this address uses “offshore accounts”, such as Consultora del Sur and “Landfield”, through which payments were made on behalf of the company. From there, bribery payments were made to Ángel Rondón, Conrado Pittaluga and the former Minister of Public Works, Víctor Díaz Rúa.
According to various newspaper archives, this division was transferred from Brazil to the country in 2014, because it was understood that at that time in the Dominican Republic there was a “favorable climate” for them to operate. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court notes that in 2014 alone, the company’s management moved between $ 650 million and $ 700 million.
Switches
The lawyers of those involved in the case constantly objected when Dantas Bezerra answered the prosecutor’s questions, arguing that the interpreter “did not translate everything the witness answered.
One of the most common interruptions in the defense was that “several times during the trial, the translator answered the witness’s questions that were not part of the trial.”
The prosecution will present two other witnesses: Rodrigo Maluf Cardoso, an executive director of the company in the country, and Marcelo Hofkke, who was appointed general manager of the company in the country, immediately after the corruption scandal broke out. He was heard in 2017.
Defense attorneys say they will demolish the key version of the witnesses
Ángel Rondón’s defense lawyers, Conrado Pittaluga and Víctor Díaz Rúa, said yesterday that they would interrogate witness Mauricio Dantas Bezerra, revealing lies, inconsistencies and manipulated conclusions that had been disseminated since his appearance in the trial. Odebrecht.
In a joint statement, the lawyers who make up the technical bars of the defendants assured that they will demolish not only Dantas Bezerra’s statements – which they say do not qualify to witness the facts because he was not present in them – but and manipulated versions that the “invisible hands” issued to the media for confusion.
“That witness, who intends to continue his testimony this month, will be subjected to a wide range of questions that will break the scenario with which he came to the country to lie, to provide inaccurate and strange information, bordering on false testimony in front of him. court ”they say.
They claimed that Dantas Bezerra, presented by the public prosecutor as a witness, did not talk about what he saw or heard, but about versions that he learned indirectly from other written sources, without having direct knowledge about the facts that he quotes them about alleged bribes.
The technical defenses of Rondón, Pittaluga and Díaz Rúa are made up of Emery Rodríguez Mateo, Jose Miguel Minier A., Fernán L. Ramos Peralta, Ramón Emilio Núñez, Víctor Manuel Martínez Ferreira, Laura Yisell Rodríguez Cuevas, Miguel Valerio Jiminián, Santiago Rodríguez Tejada, Edward Veras Vergas, Conrad Pittaluga Vicioso, Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez, Joaquín Antonio Zapata Martínez, Eric Raful Pérez and Carlos Pérez Vargas.