Santo Domingo.- The authorities yesterday seized 10 tons of copper supposedly stolen mainly from the telephone companies Tricom and Verizon, a material which is obtained from stripping phone lines and then exported to China and Taiwan along with discarded car batteries.

According to reports, the copper was found in a warehouse of the recycling company Unima located 18 kilometers north of this city in the Duarte freeway, with the arrests of the owner of the business, Tony Núñez and the warehouseman who was not identified.

Santo Domingo province prosecutor Perfect Acosta said that the preventive incarceration of the suspects would be requested tomorrow, after the filing of grand theft and conspiracy charges.

Tricom and Verizon representatives were present during the operation.

Rubén Mateo, of Tricom, told the newspaper Diario Libre that in the last three months the company has been robbed in 213 occasions.

For his part, George Andrés Lopez, the suspects’ lawyer, said that the company signed a contract with Verizon in 2002 to buy second wires hand and that the copper that they had came from those acquisitions. He also alleged that the authorities committed an abuse with the arrests.

The wire is bought at 56 pesos per pound from people who steal the street cables, leaving companies and districts incommunicado.

They proprietors of large warehouses buy the cables from intermediaries who strip the copper to export the metal.