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View Full Version : Margarita Gomez back in the news



NewsWhore
02-19-2010, 02:30 PM
Online news outlet 7dias.com.do speculates that decorator and landscaper Margarita Gomez, who the state has favored with contracts worth millions, could have been a supplier for drug baron Jose David Figueroa Agosto. The speculation was provoked by a cryptic item on a list confiscated from Ricardo Ivanovich Smester Ginebra with purchases, bribes and payments to be made on behalf of Figueroa Agosto. Smester is in jail as a leading suspect of being a front for Figueroa.
7dias.com.do makes the speculation because of the mention of the "Senora de McDonald (Margarita G). It speculates Margarita Gomez's could be the Margarita G because her store is on the same block as the Sarasota Avenue branch of McDonald's.
Margarita Gomez was mentioned as a key supplier to Quirino Paulino, who was extradited to the US for drug trafficking charges. Following the accusation, she announced that Nicole Fernandez, President Leonel Fernandez's daughter who did a 6- month interior decorating course at the Parsons School of Art and Design, was hired as a partner in her decoration store.
7dias.com.do speculates: "If one could substantiate that Gomez's store sold furniture to Figueroa Agosto and the items listed to Senora MacDonald are hers, then one would have a repeat of the case that brought the store's owner into the spotlight when the Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo scandal broke into the open. That is, those are strictly commercial relations, that are legal in a market economy".
The online news outlet recalls that in 2005, Gomez was in charge of furnishing the new Supreme Court of Justice building and had stored the furniture in the Quirino-owned Comendador rice warehouse at Calle Emilio Prud'Homme No. 13 in Santo Domingo on 21 December 2004. The items were packed in 239 boxes imported by Muebles e Interiores Gomeca, S.A.
The report states that at the time there were rumors that Paulino Castillo had contributed the money for the completion of the Supreme Court of Justice through Gomez, which she denied. According to her, her links with the extradited drug trafficker were exclusively commercial and limited to the interior decorating services she provided for him and for the mother of 4 of his children.
See: www.7dias.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=69451 (http://www.7dias.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=69451) and www.diariolibre.com/noticias_det.php?id=183428 (http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias_det.php?id=183428)

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