Santo Domingo.- An antinarcotics agent had received RD$3,000 in cash for each container he inspected in Bonao, the Drugs Control Agency (DNCD) revealed today, but didn’t specify what charges would be filed.

"This agent, Carlos Jose Aquino Castillo, lent itself to verify the containers at their destination violating the internal norms, without informing his superiors. The conviction is had he did jointly with Customs inspectors, but the ongoing investigation will determine that," DNCD president Rolando Rosado said in a statement to the press.

He said the investigation is in coordination with Puerto Rico’s authorities, among them the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

FILE.- The National Drugs Control Agency (DNCD) and the U.S. Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) probe a possible link between the Puerto Rican fugitive Jose Figueroa Agosto with around 2,000 kilos of cocaine sent to Puerto Rico camouflaged in shipments of the tubers yautía and sweet potatoes from Constanza (central) in the last 12 months.

It was determined that the “Tireo Group,” the name given to the network headed by the brothers Iván and Euclides Suazo Rivas, native of the town Tireo near Constanza, has sent 22 containers of the tubers in the last twelve months, through a nonexistent farm export company.

The authorities believe that as much as 120 kilos of cocaine were sent in at least 20 of those shipments. On Saturday the DNCD intercepted a container of the tubers with 130 kilos of cocaine in the Duarte highway toll plaza.

They determined that the brothers Suazo Rivas, one resident in the country and another in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, directed this transfer.

They were associated with five members of a same family, all natives of Tireo, using the “Fruits and Vegetables Exporter Felix Sabadino” as a front, which according to its registry in the Production and Commerce Chamber, had its offices in San Juan de la Maguana (west), but the DNCD determined that “what’s there is a humble house,” in the reported address.

The container was on a tractor trailer driven by Jose Luis Sanchez Diaz, employee of the company Marina Express, who was arrested.

The brothers Rivas Suazo, who are on the run, operated another farm import company in Mayaguez, called Taino's Products, which the DEA immediately raided. Other military intelligence agencies in the country have joined the probe.

Figueroa Agosto (Junior Capsula) eluded a DEA and DNCD dragnet in the capital, after he was linked to the US$4.6 million seized in September.

“We are trying to determine that amount of drug these people managed to introduce to Puerto Rico,” DNCD president Rolando Rosado said yesterday.

The network, several of whose members have been arrested in the Dominican Republic, shipped the drug via the Santo Domingo-Mayaguez route on the Ferry, though the farm exports company “La Española Products,” whose offices were in the street Central 96, Bonao (central), and managed by the brothers Suazo Rivas.

Since there were two companies, one which shipped farm products from Santo Domingo and the other which received them in Puerto Rico to market them in the west of that island, the Puerto Rico federal authorities and the DEA probe a possible a link with the group of Colombians being investigated for supplying cocaine to Figueroa Agosto.

“All possibilities must be investigated and discarded only when we don’t find any evidence,” Rosado said in a statement,

Rafael Durán Quezada, one of those wanted by the DNCD for his alleged link to the company “Felix Sabadino Rodriguez,” turned himself in. His wife Virgen Maria Anazagatis Mars has already been detained in the case, as well as the brothers Juan Osvaldo (Meoli), Ramon Eugenio (Genito) and Andres Durán Quezada (Moreno)

The authorities had been investigating the group’s operations for several months and the DNCD urged the Suazo Rivas brothers to surrender.