SANTO DOMINGO. – Defense attorney Carlos Salcedo representing the former president of the Senate, Andrés Bautista García, accused of receiving bribes from the Brazilian company Odebrecht, said that the statements made on Friday in the First Chamber of the Collegiate Court of the National District by the witness from Brazil , Mauricio Dantas Bezerra, are irrelevant because he cannot affirm anything and what he testifies in relation to the case says that he heard it from other people.
The jurist Salcedo said that Dantas Bezerra’s statements are those of a witness who only says that he heard, and that they are a repetition of what is in the agreements that were signed in Brazil and the United States in his capacity as a lawyer.
In addition, Salcedo said that if the Public Ministry wanted to bring relevant witnesses from Brazil, it should have summoned the whistleblowers who made the Odebrecht fraud complaint, “but they are not going to come to the country, because they were rewarded, shamefully rewarded, because they were condoned their sentences and received payments of money in cash so that they made those comfortable declarations ».
He said that in view of this reality there will be no way that they can prove that former senator Bautista García received a bribe and that he is prepared to justify every peso of his client, who began working in 1970 as an agricultural producer.
“The witness Bezerra is testifying before the judges on a matter that he does not even know, his statements before the questions asked is only to say that he heard someone, but he does not have any information directly. He is not a witness to anything, he does not make any contribution to the information in this case, ”Salcedo concluded.
This Monday, January 11, from 9:00 in the morning, the trial continues in the First Criminal Chamber of the National District Court of First Instance, with the second part of the statements of the Public Ministry witness. The court is made up of judges Jissel Naranjo, Tania Yunes and Giselle Méndez.
– .
