The director of Customs, Miguel Cocco has threatened to sue journalists Fausto Rosario Adames and Juan Bolivar Diaz and businessman Jose Luis (Pepin) Corripio’s publishing house for their questioning on the Jornada Extra TV show of the purchase price of building where the Customs Department will be relocated. Cocco had announced that the building, the former Verizon headquarters and property of former Public Works Minister Miguel Vargas Maldonado was purchased for RD$1 billion. The building became available when Verizon, which Cocco said paid a US$350,000 per month lease on the building to Vargas Maldonado, moved to a new location, as reported in the Listin Diario. On the TV show, the news commentators said that the Department of Taxes valuation of the building was RD$321 million.
Cocco says that he consulted real estate experts who valued the meter of construction at US$40. The building has 18,000 meters of construction or RD$700 million. The power generator, furnishings and other systems were valued at RD$250 million, for the total RD$1 billion price. The purchase would be over a six-year term, and an 8% interest rate. Customs advanced RD$50 million.
Cocco said he would sue the journalists because he considers they insinuated he had personally profited from the sale.
Juan Bolivar Diaz denied there had been defamation. He said Rosario just gave a technical opinion based on the valuation by a government institution.
But Cocco is taking the case personally. “I am going to take this case to the highest level, even if it takes me 20 years because nobody can play around with my morals and my integrity insinuating that I stole RD$700 million,” he said as quoted in the Listin Diario.