In a similar situation to that affecting hotels in the east recently, many industrialists in Greater Santo Domingo are now under siege from a wave of highly questionable embargoes, according to a complaint voiced by Ligia Bonetti de Valiente, the president of the Dominican Republic Industrial Association (AIRD). Ligia Bonetti said that there appears to be a “mafia of labor lawyers” filing illegal embargoes against companies. The business executive told El Nuevo Diario reporters: “They are mafia, practically criminal associates, who have irregularly obtained judicial orders, accompanied by bailiffs and generally supported by police that appear at companies and try to impose embargoes of alleged sentences.”
She said that the association is asking the authorities to look at this situation with the seriousness that it merits, and called for “a serious cleanup within the judicial apparatus…” She emphasized that the resulting loss of production and time and resources wasted fighting these irregular embargoes will end up costing many jobs, both direct and indirectly. “A stop must be put to this,” she stated, as she pointed out that the president of the Dominican College of Notaries also was complaining that unscrupulous individuals were usurping the functions of notaries and facilitating the creation of illegal notarized acts.