The assets seized from drug lords like Ernesto Quirino Castillo and Jose David Figueroa Agosto are difficult to recover legally, according to the director of the Financial Analysis Unit of the National Committee Against Money Laundering, Dulce Luciano. She told a television audience that in the case of Figueroa Agosto, the courts have only recently handed down verdicts on the assets and now the prosecutor’s office is reviewing the case. In reference to the Quirino case – perhaps the first really major drug bust in the DR with 1,383 kilos of cocaine seized – things are more difficult since much of his property was located far from Santo Domingo and much of that has been appropriated by the same people who sold it to him in the first place. The state’s lawyer said that the investigation into all of the assets was not well done and in the case of property in San Juan de la Maguana the person who sold the land happens to be a neighbor. All he has done was to remove the fences and lay claim to the land “sold” to Quirino and supposedly not paid for in full, as reported in El Nuevo Diario.