The presiding judge of the First Collegiate Tribunal of the Penal Chamber of the Court of the First Instance of the National District, Gisselle Mendez, has declared the Bahia de las Aguilas case, involving thousands of acres of public lands, to have expired, and therefore closed the case. The government had sued former Agrarian Reform director Jaime Rodriguez Guzman and his brother and wife of expropriating hundreds of thousands of hectares of land surrounding this most beautiful of beaches. But with the change of Wilton Guerrero from the Agrarian Reform department, government authorities desisted from pressing the case and state prosecutors legally maneuvered to continually postpone the case. The magistrate took this decision after confirming that the time periods for such cases had expired. The judge said that the accused had been under the accusations for over 15 years in obvious violation of their right to a trial within a “reasonable” period of time.
The District Attorney for the National District, Yeni Berenice Reynoso said that she was stunned by the court’s decision, describing it as a “disaster and a shame”, since this was one of the biggest corruption cases in the history of the country, where the defendants were trying to seize one of the Dominican Republic’s greatest assets.
She added that “it was surprising that the court weighed documents that the prosecution had not seen and this is expressly prohibited because a judge can only decide on things that have been debated. She said that her office would file an appeal against the court’s decision.