Lawyer Jose Alejandro Ayuso says that senator Felix Bautista has broken their “gentlemen’s agreement” not to release information publicly on the 26 July 2014 agreement to end litigation prior to the decision by the Miami, Florida court that is hearing the case of Felix Bautista vs. Jaime Aristy Escuder and Jose Alejandro Ayuso for the publication of “The Dark Side of Sunland” book. The case is being heard in Miami after the book was distributed there.
As part of the “gentlemen’s agreement”, both parties would wait to make the settlement public. He made the statement during the Carmen Imbert Brugal radio talk show on 94.1FM.
The comments are made after the agreement appeared in the media yesterday, Tuesday 14 October 2014 with a slant that suggested that the authors of the Dark Side of Sunland had retracted their statements. Aristy and Ayuso say the press release did not come from them.
Both Aristy Escuder and Jose Alejandro Ayuso were prompt to say they stood by the information in the book that looks into government corruption and irregularities, despite acknowledging that some details have been corrected.
On Monday, 13 October 2014 senator Bautista announced the agreement that had been reached in July, saying that the defendants acknowledged the judicial decisions in the country that had relieved Bautista from penal responsibility and charges of corruption.
“It was simply an agreement, a pact based on judicial decisions in the Dominican Republic. I will always be looking for the truth to prevail and what I did was to use mechanisms provided by the law for this purpose. If someone defames me, I will go to the courts to prove that what was said was incorrect,” said Bautista, as reported in El Nuevo Diario.
Speaking to the press yesterday, 14 October, Aristy said that Felix Bautista was the one who decided to withdraw the defamation suit. Aristy said that the Miami court had established that the book’s content did not defame Bautista, but that there were errors in some of the details. The errors include the claim that the private account for the deposits for Sun Land, owned by Consorcio Hemisferio Oriental, received deposits worth US$112 million, but the court established that only US$67 million was transferred and the rest of the money was used by Sun Land at its discretion from January to August 2007.
Aristy said that Bautista had spent US$160,000 on the suit in legal fees. He added that the main reason for the signing of the agreement was that Sun Land was allegedly preparing to sue the Dominican state for US$235 million for rescinding the contract that was signed in 2007. Sun Land planned to support its case with revelations from the Miami court case, according to Aristy. He said that as part of the agreement, Sun Land has agreed not to sue the Dominican government. He said that if Bautista had not lifted the suit, Sun Land could have used revelations made in the book to sue the Dominican state.
He said a second part of the book is being researched but he does not know if it will be published or not. Nevertheless, as reported in El Nacional, Aristy said that new documentation to which he has had access reveals that the “scale of the violations against the state by Sun Land were greater than as published in the book and that it is up to the authorities to use that information.
Meanwhile, the case for corruption and asset laundering against Bautista continues to be heard in the Supreme Court. The Attorney General Office has accused him of using his position as director of the Office of Supervising Engineers of State Works (OISOE) during the Fernandez administrations to siphon off millions into around 40 companies, most dedicated to construction or asset accumulation.
http://www.elnuevodiario.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=394668
http://www.noticiassin.com/2014/10/fue-felix-bautista-quien-decidio-cerrar-caso-aristy-escuder-dice-el-economista/
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2014/10/15/i837101_jaime-aristy-escuder-dice-corte-estatal-miami-salieron-otras-faltas.html