Fraud Case Puts New Strain on U.S.-Dominican Relations

For more than two decades, Dr. Rafael Gonzalez Pantaleon was living the American dream.

An immigrant physician from the Dominican Republic, Gonzalez was firmly planted in two cultures: He had a thriving medical practice in Manhattan and ambassador status in his homeland, which he represented as a delegate to the United Nations.

However, Gonzalez had another lucrative practice on the side, according to a federal grand jury in New York. The grand jury indicted him and four others on charges that they defrauded U.S. taxpayers out of $25 million through false billings to the Medicare system for nonexistent wheelchairs, hospital beds and prescriptions between 1989 and 1994.

The doctor was convicted in June 1996 by a federal jury in New York on 45 counts of fraud and sentenced to more than six years in federal prison.

So Gonzalez decided it was time to go home. He jumped bail and fled, living free here in the Dominican capital for more than two years while defying U.S. efforts to extradite him.

Now, Rep. William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield) says the doctor’s “extended ‘furlough’ must come to an end.” Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee on health, is pressuring Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to push hard for Gonzalez’s extradition.

The doctor is just one of more than 30 Dominican fugitives from U.S. justice who are covered by a 3-month-old law here permitting such an extradition for the first time since 1969, when they were outlawed for nationalist reasons.

Under the new law, Dominican President Leonel Fernandez is empowered to decide all pending U.S. extradition requests for Dominican citizens unilaterally on a case-by-case basis. He has made no public comment on any of them.

Gonzalez’s case stands out for two reasons: He was convicted of a white-collar crime, while the majority of fugitives are accused and, in some cases, convicted in gangland slayings or illegal drug trafficking; and Gonzalez was well-known in the past for close ties to an opposition political party that in 1996 helped put Fernandez in office.

Fernandez, a New York-educated lawyer who is viewed as a progressive democrat by most here and in Washington, has ordered the extradition of three Dominicans charged in the United States with violent crimes. Yet he has yet to act on extradition requests for high-profile cases related to financial crimes.

Those include two prominent Dominican businessmen who were indicted in Miami last year on federal charges of laundering drug money.

Since Thomas’ Nov. 30 letter to Reno urging an intensified campaign to imprison Gonzalez in the United States two years after the doctor was sentenced and fined $3.6 million in absentia, the case has taken center stage in this island republic, where nationalist pride remains strong.

U.S. diplomats and visiting State Department officials have broached the subject in meetings with Fernandez, and U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael Stanton has appeared on local talk shows to state the U.S. case against the doctor.

Gonzalez could not be reached for comment, but he has asserted in past interviews with the Dominican media that he was an innocent victim of a racist jury and that he was targeted by U.S. authorities for his political views. U.S. authorities deny both charges.

So far, Dominican authorities and media have responded to the U.S. blitz on extradition, an issue that has become a chronic irritant in U.S.-Dominican relations, by shifting the focus. Their target: Mariano Duran, a former Dominican military officer who took refuge in New York after he was charged here in 1974 in the slaying of a Dominican journalist.

Two Justice Department attorneys who visited here earlier this month in connection with the Gonzalez case found themselves spending hours with their Dominican counterparts, helping them prepare official papers for Duran’s extradition.

“We’re cooperating on the Duran case,” Stanton said. “But the government’s inaction here in the Gonzalez case is puzzling to say the least.”