US embassy cable - 05SANTODOMINGO4689

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SANTO DOMINGO 004689 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, INR/IAA, NSC FOR LATIN AMERICA 
ADVISOR; USSOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD; TREASURY FOR 
OASIA-MAUREEN WAFER; USDA FOR FAS; USDOC FOR 
4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION; USDOC FOR 
3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, KCOR, DR, EAID, Dominican Politics 
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS II #2: OFFICIAL PASSPORTS, INC 
- THE SCANDAL SPREADS 
 
REF: SANTO DOMINGO 4653 
 
 (SBU) 1. This is the second in a series of political 
reporting on the second year of the administration of 
Dominican president Leonel Fernandez. 
 
OFFICIAL PASSPORTS, INC - THE SCANDAL SPREADS 
 
(U) The scandal involving hundreds of official passports 
issued to false city councilmen and phony dependents is 
reaching uncomfortably close to senior government levels. 
Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso, Migration Director 
Carlos Amarante Baret, and Director of the Dominican 
Municipal League (LMD) Amable Aristy Castro have published 
declarations that they will require and assist a full 
investigation. 
 
(U)Assistant Attorney General Frank Soto and his 
investigators have so far interrogated more than 50 persons 
and issued arrest orders for 35, of whom 7 remain in custody. 
 Most of the rest are free on bail. The Foreign Ministry 
quickly delivered to the AG's office and to the U.S. 
Consulate the records of 800 official passports delivered to 
municipal employees, going back to 1983, when President Jorge 
Salvador Blanco authorized the practice. The Assistant AG's 
staff has found evidence of some 90 false city councilmen. 
Issuances picked up in the past four years, especially for 
family members, many of them fraudulent.  The black market 
price for an official passport has varied from 160,000 to 
250,000 Dominican pesos (USD 4900 - 7700).  The combative 
District Attorney of Santo Domingo, Juan Hernndez Peguero, 
has announced his intention to examine records in the more 
than 160 civil registry offices nationwide, directly 
challenging the National Electoral Board, which has sole 
authority over the registrars. 
 
(SBU) Deputy Director of Migration Vctor Soto went through 
nine hours of interrogation and spent the night of October 12 
in jail.  He was grilled about facilitating airplane tickets 
for a group of 50 from Azua who emigrated illegally using the 
false passports.  Soto was released the next day on his own 
recognizance and the AAG called Soto's action "a human error" 
of helping a friend buy airplane tickets for the group.  But 
for now Soto remains suspended both from his official post 
and from the Central Committee of the ruling PLD.  Two 
subordinate Migration officials are suspended for their role 
in facilitating airport formalities for persons bearing the 
false documents. 
 
(SBU) The Dominican Municipal League (LMD), the organization 
that passes central government funds to city governments for 
most of their operating revenues, published a statement by 
its controversial and politically ambitious secretary general 
Amable Aristy Castro, pledging cooperation with the 
investigation. Aristy announced that 39 persons on a list of 
72 suspect city councilmen sent by the AG's office were not 
on the LMD's rolls and were presumed to be false.  Some 
commentators discounted these forthcoming gestures by "Mr. 
Moneybags on the municipal corruption circuit."  Aristy is a 
former speaker of the lower house of Congress who aspires to 
run for President from the opposition PRSC in 2008; his 
daughter is the successful mayor of the eastern city of 
Higuey.  LMD Technical Sub-secretary Amaury Guzmn was one of 
those arrested and charged for collusion with the city 
councilmen. 
 
(SBU) At least one senior official has defied investigators 
and engaged in a test of wills with the district attorney. 
Central Election Board (JCE) president Luis Arias, whose 
court controls not only the national election machinery but 
also the civil registry offices and issuance of identity 
documents, has so far refused to allow government prosecutors 
access to any of the registry offices or archives.  Arias 
cited a law dating from before the JCE had jurisdiction over 
the registry. 
(U) In another indication of disarray in the registries, a 
majority of the nine JCE judges voted October 13 to remove 
from office whistle-blowing registrar Luis Felipe Rodrguez. 
Rodrguez had been running an efficient registry in the 
twelfth district of Santo Domingo, and he had denounced to 
the press the widespread practice of other registry officials 
of pocketing fees for documents that by law should have been 
issued free of charge.  The JCE said it had fired Rodrguez 
for "indiscipline" and "the needs of the service."  Leaders 
of all three big political parties and civil society 
criticized the JCE for what they characterized as its hasty 
action in removing Rodrguez. 
 
(U) Civic groups, including Participacion Ciudadana 
(Citizens' Participation, which receives USAID funding), have 
studied the situation in the registries and are calling for 
reforms.  The JCE has again announced plans, under 
development for years, to modernize and automate the civil 
registry.  The issue will become acute as the Dominican 
Republic prepares for the May 2006 Congressional and 
municipal elections, in which citizens will need valid 
identification cards (cedulas) to vote.  For now, the 
prevailing practice is that a notarized certificate from a 
registry is required for many government actions, including 
registering children for the new school year, but the 
document is valid for only three months. 
 
(SBU) The stark truth is that as many as 20 percent of the 
Dominican population -- 1.8 million persons -- lack identity 
documents.  The registry's inefficiencies, officials' 
arbitrary administration, and the lack of appeal were central 
points in the verdict of the Inter-American Court of Human 
Rights against the Dominican Republic brought on behalf of 
two Dominican children of Haitian ancestry.  Commissioner of 
Justice Alejandro Moscoso, in charge of judicial reform, 
acknowledged to the press on October 17 that the civil 
registries "have been rife with disorder and corruption for 
many years -- they're a real chaos." 
 
(U)  El Caribe portrayed the realities in its October 17 
editorial: 
 
 "Being a civil registrar in this country is one of the most 
prized aspirations of many petty politicians who don't 
qualify to be legislators, senators, or city councilmen. 
They work in tiny offices with standing room for two or three 
persons and suffer the heat and body odor of a growing mass 
of people who seek personal documents.  They earn meager 
salaries, which leads one to ask:  Why would anyone want to 
be a registrar?  Not for the salary;  for the income. 
 
 "The civil registries charge extraordinary fees for almost 
all services, which should be subject to fixed fees or be 
provided gratis.  Those funds don't go to the National 
Treasury, but into the pockets of civil officials who, in 
some cases, share the income with their political protectors. 
 
 "It is sad to see long lines of poor and very poor people 
standing in the rain or under the hot sun, waiting for a 
semi-literate employee or secretary to try to locate a birth 
or marriage certificate or verify data in the records. 
 "No government since Trujillo has been concerned about 
eliminating this indignity, which makes it hard to be a 
Dominican citizen.  In other words, none of the parties that 
has ruled the country has had any interest in resolving the 
problem." 
(U) 2. Drafted by Bainbridge Cowell. 
 
(U) 3. This piece and others in our series can be consulted 
at our SIPRNET web site, 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodmingo  along with 
extensive other material. 
BRINEMAN