Dominican Rep. Shrugs Off Order to Give Back Seized Paper

By: Mark Fitzgerald Nearly a year ago, the government seized control of the Dominican Republic's oldest and biggest daily, List?n Diario, and arrested owner Ram?n B?ez Figueroa on charges of perpetrating the most massive bank fraud in the history of a nation with a long legacy of high-level kleptomania.

This week, Dominican authorities curtly rejected an April 22 appeals court order that List?n be returned "immediately" to Ram?n B?ez Figueroa and his son, Ram?n B?ez Romano, who was president of the once-sprawling media empire when it was seized. No court but the Dominican Supreme Court can make the government give back the paper, Attorney General V?ctor C?spedes declared in a press conference Monday, according to an EFE wire service report on the Web site of the Santo Domingo daily El Caribe.

It's unclear when the Supreme Court will rule on the case. Last Monday, the high court's president, Jorge Subera Isa, refused to make any statement about the disposition of the newspaper, and suggested that he would recuse himself from the case, correspondent Solangel Valdez reported in Hoy, the Tribune Co.'s U.S. Spanish-language newspaper. Government attorneys have said the court president has a conflict of interest.

An attorney for B?ez Figueroa called the government's refusal nothing more than "an excuse to disguise an insult" to the court, EFE reported. If the attorney was frustrated, it was because the appeals court ruling was the second straight court order to return the newspaper from government control to its parent company, Editora List?n Diario.

But this process of one-step forward/one-step backward is how it's gone since May 15, 2003 when agents swept down on the properties of B?ez Figueroa -- and accused him of using the family's Banco Intercontinental bank to orchestrate money laundering, fraud and embezzlement amounting to $2.2 billion. The scale of alleged fraud is particularly staggering in the Dominican Republic, amounting to a full 15% of the nation's gross domestic product in 2002. In addition to the newspaper publishing company, B?ez Figueroa owned or controlled 70 radio and four television stations. (Americas Extra, June 2, 2003)

At the time of the seizure, Editora List?n Diario published List?n and three other dailies: Ultima Hora, El Expresso, and El Financiero. Public Ministry authorities appointed their own managers at the papers, and there were group resignations at some properties. As weeks and months went by, all the papers but List?n stopped publishing.

The process has been a humbling one for a paper long regarded as the nation's most prestigious. Founded in 1889, the paper followed an independent, non-partisan course rare for Dominican papers at the time. However, by 1942, its reporting had so angered strongman Rafael Leonidas Trujillo that he shut it down. It stayed closed for another 21 years -- longer even than Trujillo's dictatorship, which ended with his assassination in 1961.

Coincidently, a case very similar to that of List?n Diario is also unfolding in Mexico, where government authorities have taken over the assets of the Mexico City daily El Independiente, which was started about a year ago by Carlos Ahumada. The businessman is at the heart of a corruption scandal involving a series of videotapes apparently showing Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and other top officials in the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) taking money. Ahumada has fled to Cuba, where he is under arrest and authorities are mulling over requests for his extradition.

Veteran Mexico City journalist Tom Buckley said El Independiente "quickly gained a reputation as fearless and produced several solid pieces of investigative journalism, including one report that accused the president's wife, Marta Sahagun de Fox, of
influence trafficking."

But soon after the scandal broke, he noted, the paper's top editors and most of its staff quit. "Today, El Independiente offers mostly wire copy and unattributed 'staff' reports," said Buckley, who this week is conducting, through the ecotourism Web site planeta.com, an online seminar on the coverage of Mexico news.

Pan-Am Highway

An occasional diary of the working conditions for journalists in Latin America

Late April proved deadly for three radio reporters, with two Brazilian journalists famous for reporting on corruption killed in the same week, and one murdered in Peru. A Honduran court handed journalists a major legal victory, and a Peruvian newspaper was silenced in an unusual way.

Brazil/Paraguay

Samuel Rom?n, a reporter for the ?u Ver? radio station in the Paraguayan township of Capit?n Bado was murdered April 21 by two men on a motorcycle who shot him 13 times as he was heading home across the border to his home in the Brazilian town of Coronel Sapucaia, Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA) reported. IAPA said Rom?n hosted a program called "The Voice of the People" that challenged the conduct of Coronel Sapucaia city officials in an area known for its official corruption. Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information urged a quick investigation of murder: "We are concerned at the trend towards making reporters the target of public officials rankled by criticism and at the violence that is being seen in countries where usually differences with the press do not reach such extremes."

Just three days later, Jos? Carlos Ara?jo was shot to death in the northeastern town of Timba?ba, about 60 miles from Recife, by two unidentified gunmen who ambushed him at around 7:30 p.m. outside his home, the New York City-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) reported. Ara?jo, 37, had recently been denouncing death squads formed by criminal organizations on his R?dio Timba?a FM program called "Jose? Carlos Interviews." CPJ noted a press report from the Recife daily Folha de Penambuco that police captured one of the alleged gunmen, Elton Jonas Gon?alves de Oliveira. Police said the suspect confessed to the murder because Ara?jo called him a criminal on air.

Cuba

Two independent journalists and a human rights activist who have been imprisoned since March 2002 were sentenced to terms ranging from three to four years on April 27, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of London-based International PEN reported. The three had been held since their arrest at a peaceful protest to support another independent reporter who had been beaten by the police. At a one-day trial, T?llez Castro, director of the Agencia de Prensa Libre Avile?a, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Brizuela Yera, director of the Cooperativa de Periodistas Independientes de Camag?ey, was sentenced to three years in prison. WiPC said both were likely to be released on parole within a few days because of the time they have already spent in jail. Gonz?lez Leiva, a lawyer and member of the Cuban Human Rights Foundation, was sentenced to four years but released on probation, WiPC said. It was not certain what the three were charged with, though the WiPC said it likely was "disorderly and disrespectful behavior" under Articles 144 and 200-1 of the Cuban Penal Code.

Ecuador

The Lima, Peru-based Institute for Press and Society (IPYS) and Transparency International have awarded a team of Ecuadorian investigative journalists the top prize for reporting on corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean. Arturo Torres, a court editor at the daily "El Comercio," shared the prize for "best investigative journalism report on Latin America and the Caribbean" with colleagues Dimitri Barreto, Jean Paul Cano and Christian Torres for "exposing corruption among Ecuador's Supreme Court judiciary," IPYS said. The first prize includes a cash award of $25,000.

El Salvador

The Canadian firm CINTEC on April 2 withdrew its controversial complaint for "criminal defamation" against the director and owner of the national daily El Diario de Hoy, and two of the paper's editors, Laffite Fern?ndez and ?lvaro Cruz, the San Salvador-based Journalists Against Corruption (PFC) reported. PFC said the firm did not give any reason for withdrawing the complaint, which it filed last December. CINTEC had demanded $6 million in damages allegedly suffered by two directors -- and it asked that the three journalists be held in custody while the case was ongoing and forbidden from practicing their profession. The defamation claim stemmed from a February 2003 story alleging that some directors and employees of CINTEC, which won a contract for a garbage treatment plant in San Salvador, were linked to drug trafficking and money laundering.

Honduras

The Supreme Court of Justice has ruled that so-called "desacato" (insult or disrespect) laws are null and void in the nation because they violate liberty of expression and unnecessarily create "privileged classes" of public officials, PFC reported April 13. Desacato laws, which are still on the books in several Latin America nations, typically forbid even truthful criticism of certain public figures and institutions if the criticism is considered "insulting."

Mexico

Two men were sentenced to 20 years in prison for the December 1998 murder of San Antonio (Texas) Express-News Mexico City correspondent Philip True, who was killed on a solo hiking trip through the rugged Sierra Madre range to report on Huichol Indian culture, the Express-News reported April 28. In keeping with the wrenching turns of case, the two defendants -- Juan Chivarra de la Cruz and his brother-in-law, Miguel Hernandez de la Cruz -- are both free on bond, and their whereabouts are unclear. For more than five years the two had managed to avoid final sentencing, and were championed by some human rights activists and a wealthy U.S. expatriate. Last November, however, an investigator hired by their defense told a press conference the men had admitted overpowering and strangling True.

Peru

Radio journalist Alberto Rivera Fern?ndez, president of the Ucayali Journalists' Federation, was murdered in the middle of the afternoon April 21 by two unidentified individuals who burst into his office and shot him twice in the chest, the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. Rivera, 54, hosted a morning show called "Transparency" on a station in the eastern city of Pucallpa. CPJ said Rivera was an outspoken and controversial radio commentator known for his sharp criticism of local and regional authorities. On Jan. 13, CPJ said, Rivera participated in a demonstration organized by squatters against local authorities in the province of Coronel Portillo. The protesters damaged the local council building and Mayor Luis Valdez Villacorta filed a lawsuit against some of them, including Rivera, for property damages. Lima-based IPYS quoted a congressman accusing the mayor and the regional president, Edwin V?squez L?pez as being behind the murder.

The April 16 issue of the Arequipa weekly paper El B?ho was a sell-out, but almost nobody read it -- because, vendors say, employees of the city's San Agust?n National University swarmed through newsstands at the crack of dawn and bought up all the copies. IPYS quoted the paper's director Mabel C?ceres as saying all copies of the weekly were gone by 9 a.m. The issue included an article noting that the newspaper had won an honorable mention in a contest for "best investigative journalism on a corruption case" for its series on the university and alleged mismanagement by its rector, Rolando Cornejo Cuervo -- who was seeking reelection April 22.