The power that made him bolt a year ago returned Franjul to the Listin DiarioRodriguez was appointed as ambassador in the Holy See by efforts of (Cardinal) Lopez.

By Jose Tejada Gomez

Diario DigitalRD.Com

SANTO DOMINGO, DECEMBER 4, 2008. - The power that would have made Miguel Franjul bolt as editor-in-chief of the Listin Diario was the one who made him return.

The details indicate that Franjul had harmonized positions with the Government, after resigning nearly a year ago as head of Listin Diario, when he issued a public document accusing the authorities of having forced him to bolt form the post.

After his exit from the post nearly a year ago, Franjul had kept a low profile and began to reinforce his companies, as well as to position himself in other media, as the case of the morning talk show Hoy Mismo that produces Cesar Medina ex ambassador in Chile and a person close to president Leonel Fernandez.

With time, Frajul had smoothed his relations with the chief executive, with whom he had met in several occasions, with the journalist Medina as intermediary and in other cases cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez himself, who would have asked for the chief executive to appoint the former editor-in-chief of Listin Diario as ambassador in the Vatican.

Franjul and Lopez Rodriguez maintain a close friendship, and for years even share a television program with the prelate through channel 41, Televida.

At the request of the cardinal to designate Franjul ambassador in the Vatican, Fernandez accepted, but the decree was left written, according to information reported in the (morning radio program) Gobierno de la Mañana, since the events in the Listin Diario revolved Wednesday, December 3, 2008 and returned him to the direction of this newspaper.

The Government reaction influenced this change as the persistent criticisms published under the direction of the journalist Antonio Gil, especially against the Central Bank, responded by pressuring with three subpoenas, to collect a debt  of more than 5 billion pesos that it owes to Baninter, a bank undergoing a liquidation process.

But the incidents within Listin and that returns Franjul to the direction are more complex that what is disclosed, because the dismissal of the director Antonio Gil and Rafael Ciprián, as managing editor, derived from a tacit rupture between Mr. Ramon Báez Romano, president of the Listin Diario publishing company and his son, Ramon Báez Figueroa who serves a 10 year sentence in the jail at Najayo, for the embezzlement in Baninter.

According to reports, from jail, Báez Figueroa, through his lawyers, especially Vinicio Castillo Seman, influenced in a determinate manner in the informative and editorial line of Listin Diario, with a special fixation towards the authorities of the Central Bank, which maintained the judicial process until obtaining a definitive sentence against those implicated in the Baninter case.

The influence of Báez Figueroa and his lawyers on Listin Diario, through Gil and Ciprián, would have placed the medium’s informative line, and the editorial, beyond the reach of Báez Romano, who is the person that has lived facing the turbulences created by the judicial process in which his son has been surrounded in.

Faced with the imminent complexity of the case, and aware that at the moment it doesn’t have 5 billion pesos to pay the Government, Báez Romano would have chosen to take control of the Listin Diario, to change the leadership which didn’t tow the line in the company and negotiate with the Government, avoiding the opinions of his son and of the trial attorneys in the Baninter case, to prevent the dismemberment of that important communication medium.

It’s in that context that Franjul returns as a solution of consensus between the Government and Báez Romano. In this stage Franjul will not accept directives by Báez Figueroa and his lawyers, rather those of Báez Romano.

In principle, Diario DigitalRD.Com has known, that the purpose is to try to look for a solution that preserves Listin Diario under any circumstances, be it that its present proprietors retain it, or that they must hand it over for the debt that the company maintains with Baninter and collected by the Central bank.