The author is a communicator. Lives in New York
BY LUIS M. GUZMAN
The recent case of presidential advisor Fabio Jorge-Puras and former official Gaspar Polanco-Virella, accused by a federal jury in Florida of conspiring to traffic cocaine, has opened a crack that reveals the deepest roots of power in the Dominican Republic.
This is no longer just a judicial fact, but rather a portrait of a political illness that the country has preferred to deny, the silent infiltration of drug trafficking into institutions.
Both characters moved between the shadows of prestige. Fabio was an honorary advisor to the Government and treasurer of the Águilas Cibaeñas; Gaspar, former director of the National District City Council and former presidential security.
Neither seemed like a “capo”, but both show how organized crime no longer needs rifles to penetrate power, an honorary position, an invitation to the box and the complicity of silences are enough.
Mutation
Drug trafficking in the Dominican Republic has mutated. He went from the clandestine courts of the eighties to the air-conditioned office of political advisors. Today he buys reputations, finances campaigns and uses sport as a moral refuge.
Each photo, each sponsorship or each donation are legitimization mechanisms that launder more than money, they launder the past, the origin and, above all, suspicion.
Sports, and especially baseball, have become a mirror of this metamorphosis. Professional clubs, which should be spaces of transparency, have become ideal platforms for laundering prestige. The case of the Águilas Cibaeñas shows how crime can be disguised as honor. The problem is not the club, but the ease with which power opens its doors to those who come with money, even if they smell like white powder.
Political power does not escape either. Since 2008, the cases of Figueroa Agosto, César el Abusador, Operación Falcón and the conviction of former deputy Miguel Gutiérrez Díaz reveal the same pattern, criminal networks that finance campaigns, buy protection and then shield themselves with public positions or with the silence of those who know too much. Drug traffickers not only traffic drugs; influence peddling.
Law 33-18 of Parties and Law 15-19 Electoral tried to bring order, but fell short. Finance committees lack independent audits and spending reports arrive late or not at all. No party has a real system to verify the origin of the funds it receives.
In practice, anyone with money can become a political benefactor, without anyone asking where their fortune comes from.
The state institutions, fragmented and weak, function like an archipelago where each island keeps its secret. The DNCD, the PEPCA, the UAF and the Comptroller’s Office do not share information quickly, and money laundering or corruption alerts are activated when the damage has already been done. The authorities react through media or diplomatic pressure, almost always when the case comes from a foreign court.
Between 2008 and 2024, the country advanced in laws, but fell backwards in surveillance. Illicit money flows adapted to the new times, charitable foundations, sports sponsorships, cultural donations and front companies. The drug trafficker learned that, in a country where success is confused with virtue, it is enough to appear prosperous to be respectable. And when social respect is bought, justice is rented.
The danger is not only in large international operations. It is in the municipalities, in the express tenders, in the transporters that finance rallies and in the improvised businessmen who pay for fences in exchange for contracts. It is in those small daily pacts where crime penetrates politics. Dirty money does not enter with violence; Enter with a smile, a contribution and a promise.
Domain Forfeiture Law 340-22 represents a historic opportunity. It allows illegal assets to be confiscated without waiting for a criminal conviction, as long as there is evidence of illegal origin. If applied rigorously, it can break the alliance between power and dark money. But if it is politicized, if it is used as a selective weapon, it will end up fueling the same impunity that it claims to combat.
Need
The country needs ethical and technical shielding. Real-time audits, bank traceability for campaigns, immediate suspension of officials under investigation and “suitability” protocols in sports clubs. It is not about moralizing, but about institutionalizing transparency. When opaque money finances politics, every vote loses value and every law is born contaminated.
The virus of drug trafficking cannot be fought with speeches or occasional indignation. You fight with institutions that are priceless. As long as the parties remain blind to the origin of their funds and the State continues to react after the scandal, power will continue to be fertile ground for corruption.
Only the constant light of vigilance can cure a disease that is already systemic.
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