Scandal-fraught official swapped for one with shady past

Santo Domingo.- Thenewly appointed Cooperative Development Institute (IDECOOP) director AnibalGarcia Duvergé brings with him a questioned past in handling taxpayers moneyand replaces Pedro Corporan, who´s also linkedto numerous scandals.

Acento.com.do reportsthat during Hipolito Mejia´s administration in 2001 the then head of the DominicanPort Authority was questioned by the Justice Ministry´s Anticorruption Dept.for having spent the “scandalous” amount of RD$288.4 million on fuel, averaging61,644 pesos per day from November to December 2001.

The document alsonotes that while head of the Port Authority Garcia had 31 relatives on its payrollwith the highest salaries.

Another irregularityuncovered in an audit by Ana Cecilia De Jesus y Morfe, Francisco RamirezMontilla and Julian Rojas Rosario, was that from August 2000 to December 31,2001 the Port Authority staff was tripled through various payrolls to 3,450permanent employees among other people getting a paycheck.

The audit establishedthat the ballooned staff cost taxpayers RD$28 million monthly, some RD$336million per year.

In that occasion theauditors recommended a wider investigation on Garcia´s creation of a sort of parallelpayroll called a ”motivation bonus” to siphon extra money toward 466 employeesand officials, costing taxpayers anotherRD$6.0 million each year.