Santo Domingo.- The Dominican Government’s “pathologically corrupt” official paid 1.8 million dollars (RD$65 million) in cash for an apartment in the now confiscated luxury building Torre Atiemar, revealed the journalist Maria Cristina Rodriguez in Telemicro’s program Zona 5.

Hector Rodriguez Pimentel, head of the agrarian reform agency IAD, figures in the list of apartment buyers in Atiemar, whose owner Arturo del Tiempo is at the center of a probe in his native Spain for 1,200 kilos of cocaine seized in Valencia.

Zona 5, quoting a source, said buyers were attracted to the low prices of the posh apartments and include the plastic surgeon Hector Cabral, Janet Rivera, of the business group Pedro A. Rivera, Jangle Marco Antonio Vásquez, owner of the companies Nativa and Credigás, who paid cash, and the journalist Guillermo Gomez, who bought a penthouse.

The source added that several colonels and other show business and media figures also bought apartments, whose prices ranged from 1.3 million to 1.7 million dollars.

With this case denunciations of corruption allegedly involving Rodriguez Pimentel rose to eight, for which Anti-Corruption Department director Otoniel Bonilla described the official as “pathologically corrupt,” after investigative reporters Nuria Piera and Alicia Ortega uncovered practices in every agency he has directed, the Hydraulic Resources Institute (INDRHI) and the Dominican Consulate in Haiti, in addition to the IAD.

Rodriguez Pimentel heads a faction of the opposition party PRSC, allied to the ruling PLD.

Recently several South region organizations including the Diocese of Barahona asked to the Controller General and the Accounts Chamber to conclude the audits conducted on Rodriguez Pimentel’s tenure in INDRHI and to publish the results, mainly on the alleged overvaluation of more than one billion pesos in the construction of the Monte Grande Dam, as denounced by the Government’s own Ethics Commission director, Marino (Vincho) Castillo.

One of Atiemar’s owners, del Tiempo’s son Arturo, who is also being investigated, promotes a concert by the singer songwriter Joaquin Sabina in Santo Domingo and Santiago, through his Facebook account.