The executive vice president of the Foundation for Institutionalism and Justice (Finjus), Servio Tulio Castanos Guzman, is recommending a government audit of the Dominican Agrarian Institute (IAD) to find other irregular cases like the one involving Bahia de las Aguilas beach lands in Pedernales in the southwest. According to reports, similar procedures have been used in many other beach destinations in the country.
He described the announcement that President Danilo Medina had authorized the government to cut a deal with fraudulent owners of Bahia de las Aguilas government land as “an institutional crisis.” Speaking on the Huchi Lora y el Equipo talk show on CDN 92.5Fm yesterday, Wednesday 20 February, Castanos criticized the Executive Branch for taking a decision that overrides Dominican justice. He said that the deal could be challenged in any court in the future.
Castanos believes that the decision to go ahead with the deal will be damaging to judicial security in the Dominican Republic. He said that the Executive Branch, outside of the judiciary, was unilaterally conferring rights to illicitly obtained property.
The Bahia de las Aguilas case has been in the courts since 1997. After the change of government from Joaquin Balaguer to Leonel Fernandez, the new authorities investigated and determined that the IAD had created a fictitious farmer settlement on beach lands. The scheme consisted of granting land to local people for farming purposes, and then flipping the titles so the lands could be sold for a profit. With the change of government from President Joaquin Balaguer to President Leonel Fernandez in 1996, the deals were exposed and contested in court. At the time proof of the fraudulent operation was presented, but the government prosecutors delayed the case and it is still being heard in court.
Furthermore, Castanos Guzman said it would be a negative precedent to start the Trust Law. He said the Ley Fideicomiso 189-11 requires that the object of trusts be licit transactions, while the proposed deal for Bahia de las Aguilas is not. He said that there has been negligence on the part of the state lawyers in the prosecuting of the case.