NewsWhore
03-10-2008, 03:30 PM
One again investigative journalist and television commentator Nuria Piera has exposed a government scandal of immense proportions. Said to be more pervasive than the Sun Land US$130 million loan issue, the CB affair (Comite de Base in Spanish) purports to reveal payments, using state funds, of between RD$3,000 and RD$4,000 per month for thousands of unemployed PLD party members. According to Diario Libre, the government could well be involved in something similar to the much-criticized PEME program in the previous Fernandez administration. According to Piera's revelation, the government pays out this money through "special 'CB' payrolls". In order to qualify for the monthly check, all a person has to do is present a letter from the Intermediate Committee to which they belong, and swear that they do not have a job. The PLD has 55,000 Base Committees and says it has 1.2 million members. According to Piera's investigation, the Ministry of Agriculture has a special payroll of 4,252 people with a budget of RD$9.7 million a month; the Dominican Agrarian Institute has 3,000 lucky folks on its lists and RD$9.44 million per month; and the Dominican Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INDRHI) distributes RD$26 million to 8,731 people each month. However, it doesn't end there. The National Potable Water Institute (INAPA) hands out RD$20.1 million to some 6,700 unemployed PLD loyalists, and according to sources, the Ministry of Public Works has even more people on its "CB" payrolls, but the figures were not forthcoming. The reporter called the financial offices of the different government dependencies and asked: "Are the CB checks ready yet?" Often the employee would respond, "Not yet." Even the Santo Domingo Water Works (CAASD) has a special place behind their main offices where the checks are distributed. PLD party leader Reinaldo Pared Perez said that he did not know about any such program.
In his A.M. column today, editor Adriano Miguel Tejada describes such use of public funds as "criminal." He says that the government is going to have to tread softly in this case in order to explain it away. He says that when he writes "tread softly" it is because handing out this money is a violation of several laws, including possibly the Constitution, and has no way of being hidden and could be worse, in legal terms, than the Sun Land case. The CB program is being carried out in violation of the austerity laws, budget controls, personnel controls and a long list of etceteras, and could not have been put into place without the involvement of the principal PLD leaders, including the President, a direct beneficiary of the program. It's like this: no official of the treasury, the controllers office, no minister or director can authorize a payroll of this kind with their own funding and without affecting their other programs, without the corresponding permission. Tejada says that the recurrence of policies like the PEME means that this will bring about, no doubt, judicial actions and a movement against presidential re-election as an institution. "With this going on, one has to question payment of taxes," he editorializes.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#12)
In his A.M. column today, editor Adriano Miguel Tejada describes such use of public funds as "criminal." He says that the government is going to have to tread softly in this case in order to explain it away. He says that when he writes "tread softly" it is because handing out this money is a violation of several laws, including possibly the Constitution, and has no way of being hidden and could be worse, in legal terms, than the Sun Land case. The CB program is being carried out in violation of the austerity laws, budget controls, personnel controls and a long list of etceteras, and could not have been put into place without the involvement of the principal PLD leaders, including the President, a direct beneficiary of the program. It's like this: no official of the treasury, the controllers office, no minister or director can authorize a payroll of this kind with their own funding and without affecting their other programs, without the corresponding permission. Tejada says that the recurrence of policies like the PEME means that this will bring about, no doubt, judicial actions and a movement against presidential re-election as an institution. "With this going on, one has to question payment of taxes," he editorializes.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#12)