Vice President Joe Biden and a top State Department official in recent months talked with a Dominican Republic party leader accused of accepting bribes from a prominent drug trafficker and facilitating one-party rule on the island, raising questions about the U.S. commitment to promoting democracy in the Caribbean and combating the illicit drug trade, critics say.
Biden briefly talked in March with Miguel Vargas Maldonado, president of the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and chairman of the Socialist International Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean (SICLAC), on the sidelines of the inauguration for new Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. Vargas also met in April with State Department Counselor Tom Shannon, a former U.S. ambassador to Brazil and assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, in Washington.
Biden and Vargas discussed ways to strengthen ties between the United States and the Dominican, while Vargas and Shannon touched on issues such as public safety, drug trafficking, investment, and trade between the two countries, according to media reports from the region.
Vargas has been dogged by allegations of corruption throughout his career in Dominican politics, raising questions about his meetings with U.S. officials. A 2006 cable from the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic, published by Wikileaks, noted accusations that Vargas’ personal wealth has "come through shady dealings." He has also been linked to a major regional drug trafficker and a questionable loan from a state bank.
"Vargas is the poster child for a feckless U.S. policy toward the Dominican Republic," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who requested anonymity to speak more freely. "He is helping [former President] Leonel Fernandez mug democracy, taking money from a drug trafficker, and getting sweetheart loans from the government he's supposed to be opposing."
"Rather than honoring him with meetings with the vice president and senior State Department officials, he should be under investigation by U.S. law enforcement," the former diplomat added. "These meetings send a terrible message to decent people in the Dominican Republic who expect the U.S. to at least know who the bad guys are."
After Vargas lost in the 2008 presidential election to Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), the current ruling party, a rival faction of the PRD accused Vargas of intentionally dividing his own party for personal gain. Vargas in 2009 inked a "blue ties pact" with Fernandez to ensure bipartisan cooperation on constitutional and judicial reform, a deal that "divided" the PRD and created a "fractured opposition," according to a report last November from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Vargas refused to back the PRD’s candidate in the 2012 presidential election, former President Hipolito Mejia, after losing to him in a bitter primary fight. Rival PRD leaders alleged earlier this year that Vargas obtained a $15 million loan in December 2011—five months before the election—from a state-owned bank in return for his efforts to split the opposition and benefit the ruling PLD. Vargas later admitted that the bank granted the loan to his company but denied that it was a political kickback.
The PRD under Vargas’ leadership then expelled Mejia from the party after he lost the 2012 election—a controversial decision that further stoked divisions and at one point erupted in a violent gunfight in party headquarters resulting in six injuries. The country’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), accused of interfering in the case on behalf of the PLD, validated Mejia’s expulsion.
The Vargas-Fernandez "pact, largely viewed as Miguel Vargas’ movement to ally with the ruling PLD, in conjunction with the alleged TSE bias, together create the impression of an intentionally divided opposition—to the benefit of the ruling party," the CSIS report said.
A State Department spokesperson said she did not have more information on Shannon’s meeting with Vargas and the allegations of corruption against him.
The vice president’s office declined to comment on Biden’s brief talk with Vargas in March. Biden, the Obama administration’s frequent emissary to Latin America, will meet with PLD leader and current Dominican President Danilo Medina the week of June 16 after he attends the United States’ World Cup soccer match in Brazil against Ghana.
Additionally, Vargas in January 2013 was accused of accepting $300,000 in bribes from Jose Figueroa Agosto, a notorious cocaine trafficker known as the "Pablo Escobar of the Caribbean" who was captured by U.S. agents and Puerto Rican police in 2010. Agosto’s ex-girlfriend, currently serving a five-year jail sentence in the Dominican for money laundering, made the allegations as part of her plea agreement with the police.
The Dominican Republic is "an important transit country for illicit drugs from South America destined for North America and Europe" and is a country where "corruption remains endemic," according to the State Department’s 2014 annual report on narcotics trafficking.
More cocaine and other illegal drugs have recently entered into the United States as U.S. military assets in Latin America have declined, leading to more drug-induced deaths in America and higher social costs.
The State Department spokesperson said the United States remains committed to combating narcotics trafficking through joint initiatives such as the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), a program that provides millions to assist regional governments with drug interdiction, police training, and crime prevention.
However, critics say the United States should do more to promote democracy in countries such as the Dominican and take a tougher stand against corruption.
"Congress should investigate our disoriented policy in the Dominican Republic, before another democracy [in the region] falls apart," the former diplomat said.