The World : Ex-President Sentenced

Former Dominican Republic President Salvador Jorge Blanco was sentenced in absentia by a court in Santo Domingo to 20 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay a $16.6-million fine for corruption. Jorge Blanco, who ruled the Caribbean nation between 1983 and 1986, later told a Dominican television station in an interview from his home in Atlanta that he will return to Santo Domingo on Wednesday to face the charges. The court also imposed 20-year prison terms and $16.6 million in fines on Jorge Blanco’s former budget aide, Leonel Almonte, and on Juan Tomas Pena Valentin, a former armed forces supplier. The case involved 38 counts of embezzlement and other abuses of power while Jorge Blanco was in office.