Santo Domingo.- Two Police colonels have been interrogated in Police headquarters in connection with the murder of an Army colonel, the fugitives Sobeida Felix Morel and the Puerto Rican Jose Figueroa Agosto, and with the seized US$4.6 million.

The now famous mansion which the Justice Ministry says is owned not by Mary Peláez but rather by Figueroa, shows that the most wanted narcotics trafficker is a man of good taste, who leans toward the aesthetic.

The residence the authorities had confiscated from Peláez has a sophisticated security system, cameras and sensors in each corner, a gym, sauna, entries via two different streets and secret passages and doors which link the closets to the main living room and to the swimming pool, will be presented tonight in the program of the journalist Alicia Ortega.

The authorities say traces cocaine have been detected in all the rooms of the residence, one of Figueroa’s several properties, uncovered after the Drugs Control Agency (DNCD) confiscated US$4.6 million in the parking lot of a luxury condo apartment  in the name of Felix Morel.

The house’s state of abandon contrasts with its swanky décor. “Given its history, we assume that it was a way of escape,” said DNCD Financial Investigation Department director Julio Cesar Souffront.

Ortega reports that Figueroa paid around 100,000 dollars just to the design the decoration, which the authorities say is very similar to other properties also in the hands of associates.

The National District prosecutor says Mary Peláez, being held in Najayo prison, is one of the fronts to manage assets used by Figueroa, convicted to 209 years in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering in Puerto Rico.

Police colonels interrogated

Interrogated in Police headquarters yesterday was Police colonel Elvis Soriano Familia, whom the fugitive Sobeida Felix said should be investigated if something bad happened to her. She made that surprising statement while being escorted along the Ciudad Nueva courthouse corridor several months ago in connection with the seized US$4.6 million.

Last Wednesday in a phone call to the Z-101 FM radio program, a man who said he was Figueroa revealed he had sent one million dollars to Soriano and another colonel assigned to the DNCD to let him escape. He affirmed that the money was  given to the murdered colonel Amado Jose González.

That same day DNCD Planning and Operations chief colonel Miguel Sanchez Martinez was interrogated for several hours in connection with Gonzalez’s murder and for possible links with Figueroa.

Also interrogated was colonel Manuel Diaz Medina, head of DNCD services in La Romana International Airport. Both officers were then taken to DNCD, where they are now being held.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) continues to cross information to establish if Figueroa if fact made the telephone call.