SANTO DOMINGO.- Customs director Miguel Cocco yesterday blasted the corruption he described as the decay evident in many levels of government, and warned that the country will not advance out of poverty if “drastic” penalties aren’t applied.

He said against corruption the country “needs a hard and punishing hand that halts it."

According to Cocco, the officials who exhibit a behavior of opulence haven’t worked according to what professor Juan Bosch preached and taught, and have forgotten that “first it’s necessary to serve and not to serve oneself."

He said that although it’s certain that in all governments there are officials who commit indelicate acts, "we didn’t expect that indelicacies would be committed in a government headed by a party founded by an unpolluted man such as professor Juan Bosch."

He made it clear however that president Leonel Fernandez doesn’t have any type of complicity in the corruption which some officials could commit, since he has proven to be "a man whom money doesn’t interest him, that the personal accumulation of wealth doesn’t interest him.”

He said that at this moment of crisis, when funds are timid and absent, "it’s important and urgent to penalize all illicit acts, for which we must demand that each Dominican becomes an accusing finger against the officials who don’t carry out their duty."

Cocco, interviewed in the Colorvision program Aeromundo, urged Dominicans to become defending guardians of the properties of the nation and identify all the officials who flaunt a wealth they cannot prove who don’t do their job, and who exert their functions in detriment of the country’s resources.