DOMINICAN POLITICS #12: NARCOTICS EXTRADITION TESTS SYSTEM, WORRIES MILITARY & POLITICIANS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 SANTO DOMINGO 000799



SIPDIS



STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, WHA/EPSC, INL, L/LEI, PM;

NSC FOR SHANNON AND MADISON;USCINCSO ALSO FOR

POLAD;TREASURY FOR OASIA-LCARTER; JUSTICE FOR OIA

USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION

USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI



E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2025

TAGS: SNAR, CJAN, KJUS, PGOV, PREL, MARR, DR, HA, CO

SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS #12: NARCOTICS EXTRADITION

TESTS SYSTEM, WORRIES MILITARY & POLITICIANS



Classified By: DCM Lisa Kubiske. Reason: 1.4 (b) and (d).



1. (U) Following is the twelfth in our series on the first

year of the administration of Dominican President Leonel

Fernandez:



Narcotics trafficker Paulino is likely to finger some senior

Dominican politicians and military officers for complicity,

for taking bribes or at least for deliberately turning a

blind eye as he made millions of dollars from drugs.



Quirino Paulino, the Cynosure of Dominican Justice

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(U) With his baby face and balding head, Quirino Paulino

Castillo does not at first glance look like the centering

point for the orientation of Dominican justice. A Supreme

Court verdict on Friday, February 18, will be decisive about

the meaning of Paulino,s narcotics trafficking case for the

viability of the Dominican justice system, with important

implications for Dominican politics and for Dominican society

as a whole.



(U) The Dominican National Directorate for Drug Control

(DNCD) with advice and guidance from its U.S. counterpart,

the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested Paulino on

December 18, shortly after they had stopped a flatbed truck

on a main thoroughfare in downtown Santo Domingo. The truck

was loaded with 1387 kilos of neatly stacked bundles of

cocaine. Monitored telephone calls had given away the game,

providing evidence that Quirino, labeled "the Don" by his

confederates, had arranged the shipment.



(C)) This was the largest drug bust in Dominican history.

The success in bilateral enforcement cooperation led to a

rapid request from the Federal District Court for the

Southern District of New York for the extradition of Paulino,

processed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S.

Department of State and the U.S. Embassy and delivered to the

Dominican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs in two weeks, a

speed without precedent since extraditions were initiated

back in 1998. New York wants Paulino because New York City

was the intended destination of the cocaine; DEA and the rest

of the U.S. law enforcement community additionally want

Paulino out of the Dominican Republic to keep him from

bribing his way out of the charges, to get him to talk, and

to keep him alive.



The Shape of Future Extraditions

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(SBU) The Paulino case is a big one not only because of the

size of the haul but also because it is, by coincidence of

timing, a precedent-setting case for future extradition

cases. The 90 extraditions to the United States granted

since 1998 were recommended by Dominican attorneys general

and approved by Dominican presidents under Napoleonic penal

procedures dating from the early days of the Republic.

Dominican courts had almost nothing to do with the

extraditions. But with U.S. technical assistance and advice,

the Dominicans have in recent years begun an overhaul of

their justice system, with the Dominican Congress voting a

new criminal procedures code that since last September limits

the discretion of the executive and provides defendants with

more clearly defined procedural processes intended to

reinforce constitutional rights. One central change in the

new Code was to assign to the 5-judge Penal Chamber of the

Supreme Court the authority to review requests for

extradition and give it jurisdiction over oral hearings in

each case.



(C) Well aware of the enduring importance of this case,

Dominican Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito was

determined to make the best possible arguments. He sought

and obtained from U.S. authorities within days an additional

affidavit with more specific information concerning the U.S.

based charges. The USG furnished case law from other

jurisdictions in which extraditions had been granted,

including Colombia, to strengthen the presentation of the

case against Paulino. Paulino,s attorneys obtained a

continuance of several days in order to study the additional

information, but on February 4 the Penal Chamber heard the

final arguments. A Dominican government attorney represented

U.S. interests in reciprocity with U.S. procedures, an

arrangement challenged by the defense. The Chamber gave

itself two weeks, until February 18, to render its verdict on

the extradition and related issues.



(U) Paulino has been held almost continuously at the DNCD

rather than at the public jail of Najayo. He protested this

decision early in the process, telling the Chamber in an

outburst while leaving the court, " I am losing all my color

because I haven,t seen the sun since I was arrested." His

defense obtained an order from a lower court mandating his

transfer to Najayo, where he could meet his attorneys in

private. The executive branch complied, placing him in the

holding area for fugitives subject to extradition

proceedings. Within days, however, Attorney General

Dominguez Brito ordered Paulino returned to the DNCD and told

the press of "credible evidence of an international

conspiracy" against Paulino. An apparently shaken Paulino

told his lawyers not to contest the move.



(SBU) The Paulino extradition is a test for the ethics and

credibility of the Penal Chamber, the Supreme Court, and the

whole Dominican justice system. Paulino,s family and

supporters have used the card of "national sovereignty" and

maligned the intentions of the United States. A comment in

passing by a senior member of the Embassy team about "U.S.

concerns about Dominican justice" sparked diatribes in the

media and the press; the Ambassador used a press encounter at

the presidential palace to express confidence both in the

Dominican justice system and in the Embassy official. The

public relations office of the Supreme Court immediately

produced an eerie half-page newspaper ad reproducing in

shadow tones the newspaper accounts of the Ambassador,s

remarks and bold-faced reprints of editorial defenses of the

Supreme Court. Ever eager for a story, journalists twisted

comments by Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Subero Isa to

imply that the Penal Chamber,s decision could be appealed to

the 16-judge plenum of the Court. Both the Attorney General

and Subero Isa refuted this interpretation.



(SBU) President Fernandez supports the extradition request.

Cardinal Nicholas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez and papal nuncio

Timothy Broglio have publicly endorsed sending Paulino to the

United States for trial.



(C) Will the Penal Chamber approve the extradition?

Domnguez Brito (strictly protect) says that they will and

cites the reputation for integrity of two (" . . .no, three")

of the five members. Intelligence indicates that efforts may

be under way to sound out judges about possible payoffs;

amounts proffered could be substantial, considering other

rumors that the defense attorneys are receiving between US$ 3

million and US$ 5 million. Our impression is that there is a

better chance in the Penal Chamber than in the plenary, where

reputations are shakier and some politically involved

justices might tend to want to keep Paulino in the country,

so as to contain political fallout.



The Underside of the Rock

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(SBU) Political fallout is a very immediate consideration.

Paulino was based in the province of Elias Pia, on the

central border with Haiti. He comes from a poor family, but,

to hear his mother tell it, "He saved and invested everything

he made." As his fortune grew, Paulino was buying support

and becoming a benefactor to the province. Assets seized by

the Dominican authorities were estimated at a value of some 3

billon pesos (US$ 100 million). They included bank accounts,

cash, three gasoline stations, a dairy farm, a rice bill, an

oilseed farm, a ranch, a distributor of cooking gas, a motel,

a helicopter pad and two helicopters. He had purchased one

chopper from the notorious political fixer "Pepe" Goico,

bagman for the lavish payments made by Ramon Baez of the

now-failed Baninter to support the presidential travel of

President Hiplito Mejia. (Goico,s misuse of the Baninter

credit card was so flagrant that Baez sued him and got him

cashiered, although only briefly.)



(U) Given the scale of his operations, Paulino must have

been working with Colombian cocaine wholesalers and bringing

the drugs across the border from Haiti, probably by

helicopter. He had traveled at least three times to the

United States over the last year or so, by his own admission

to the Court. The sworn affidavit from the U.S. court

outlined one encounter arranged by phone, where surveillance

agents saw Paulino accept delivery in Santo Domingo of a

duffle bag said to hold $500,000 in cash.



(SBU) Paulino was driving a white Mercedes 500 sedan when he

was arrested. The car had been imported duty-free using an

authorization issued to Senate Vice-President Csar Matas of

Mejia,s Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Matas told

the press he knew nothing about it; he had transferred the

authorization to a dealer (a transaction that happens to be

against the law).



(C) Within days papers published photos of Mejia,s chief of

staff Sergio Grulln and his wife from a ceremony in Elias

Pia where Paulino had gotten recognition as an "outstanding

citizen." In recent weeks President Fernandez and

"reformista" presidential candidate Eduardo Estrella have

separately told us that advisors had urged them to meet

Paulino because of his standing in the province - - and each

was clearly relieved not to have done so. Unfriendly voices

in the Dominican press commented that former president

Hipolito Mejia,s trip via Miami to Mexico to attend the

Caribbean baseball series in early February had the

additional purpose of demonstrating that the USG had not

suspended his U.S. visa.



(C) And then there is the question of Paulino,s military

career. He was appointed a lieutenant in irregular fashion

in March 2002, almost probably in return for cash payments to

someone in the military hierarchy. In May 2003, President

Mejia signed a decree promoting him to the rank of captain.

Although the press has not dug up the fact, Paulino,s farms

in Elias Pia were providing military outposts there with

provisions, free of charge - - an arrangement that was

suspended by the new army leadership within weeks after the

inauguration of Leonel Fernandez. Paulino was "separated and

passed to the reserves" in October 2004, one of many

military officers dismissed after Leonel Fernandez took

office.



(C) These are only the first of the connections available in

this case. Everyone expects more. Secretary of the Armed

Forces Sigfrido Pared Perez insists to all that he will not

hesitate to investigate any links to Paulino revealed in the

interrogations. He already has information about the ties

to Paulino of some active duty officers, and he is likely to

wait to take action until the traditional annual

announcements of military changes scheduled for February 28.

Cynics think that most politicians can probably bounce out of

this one, the way the Senate vice-president has done. But

since no one really believes that Paulino was smart enough to

have done this largely on his own, there are almost certainly

newly wealthy Dominicans - - several of them probably in the

military officer corps - - and some seriously violent

Colombians who would prefer that Paulino not talk.



Crime - - Orientation and Disorientation

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(SBU) In a larger sense, the Paulino case offers an

orientation to the issue of corruption and crime in Dominican

society as a whole. Newspapers and the Fernandez

administration have made much of "a crime wave afflicting

Dominican society" since mid-2004, even though statistics do

not bear this out. Commentators assert that narcotics

traffickers are to blame. "There are 200,000 dealers in the

country," commented new Police Chief Prez Snchez shortly

after assuming office. It is not clear to us whether drug

use has indeed grown as quickly as the administration is

implying, but the topic is now open for discussion.



(U) Distrust of the police and the authorities is widespread

in poor neighborhoods, with good reason (see our Human Rights

Report). In several recent developments some of those

communities have openly supported acknowledged criminals. A

small band from Elias Pia demonstrated outside the Supreme

Court, saluting Paulino as a philanthropist. One of the

protesters was the former governor of the province, who was

jailed briefly for her actions. Six weeks ago, after rivals

shot down a well-known drug dealer in a poor Santo Domingo

neighborhood, a large crowd scandalized the country by

carrying his flag-draped coffin through the public streets.

And in Azua, a gang leader accused of the assassination of a

local radio journalist eluded capture for months because the

populace collaborated to keep him out of sight.



(C) In private President Fernandez for a time pointed a

finger at Mejia,s PRD, which as a large populist party is

indeed strong in the poor neighborhoods. But we see no

credible evidence that the badly bruised and still

disorganized PRD is promoting thuggishness.



(SBU) The Quirino Paulino case offers the Fernandez

administration an opening to take concrete action against

narcotics trafficking and crime, as a step toward

establishing credibility for the administration as a whole

when the President talks about ending corruption. The

February 18 decision will provide the judicial reaction to

Paulino; if Paulino is then packed off expeditiously to safe

and unreachable interrogations in the United States, he may

be able to provide further information to orient the

Dominican executive, as well.



- - - - - -

(U) Cynosure. (Latin transcription of Greek for"Dog,s Tail"

- - the constellation of Ursa Minor, containing Polaris, the

North Star). . . 2. figurative. Something that serves for

guidance or direction; a guiding star., - - Oxford

English Dictionary.



2. (U) Drafted by Michael Meigs.



3. (U) This report and others in our series can be consulted

on our SIPRNET site

http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo< /a>

along with extensive other material.



HERTELL