He explained that she is a Belgian citizen, a real estate businesswoman with various investments in Las Terreras, and became interested when she saw that it was an auction that could yield "good results in the real estate market".
LAS TERRENAS.- A housing complex whose estimated market price ranges around US$15 million, was sold at public auction for an amount of only US$240 thousand, amid a legal dispute that has pitted a construction firm against the heirs of the project, in this district.
This is the “Don César Complex”, located in the tourist area of Las Terrenas, a project of 118 apartments of family origin, whose construction company was suspended by the owners without having completed the work, alleging dissatisfaction with the construction process.
Since then, in 2007, Comercial Tomillo, the company in charge of managing the complex, and Edificaciones Ignacio Gómez, have gone through a long journey through various judicial instances, which led to the property being put up for public auction and sold for the ridiculously low sum of less than US$300,000, in an irregular manner according to the documents presented last night by journalist Alicia Ortega on her program El Informe.
“Edificaciones Ignacio Gómez, through its lawyers, continued a procedure without cause, that is, without a debt that could be collected. Through maneuvers, it managed to finalize the sale in a public auction without informing the pursued party and put all these apartments, whose market value exceeds, we assume, 15 million dollars, up for sale for only 239,000 dollars. That is, it put them up for sale for a value of around 1% of their real value, even though the debt it was pursuing had already been extinguished by a court ruling,” explained Jorge Morilla, lawyer for Comercial Tomillo.
According to the data presented by El Informe, the Civil, Commercial and Labor Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the Judicial District of Samaná, through a sentence, declared the bidder Christelle Jocelyne Schmit the winner of the real estate foreclosure process for US$239 thousand dollars, saying that it is the total amount of the first bid for the property.
“Christelle entered this public auction sale process just one day before the hearing in which the properties were sold at public auction, that is, on June 28, 2022, she registered as a bidder, she hired my services because she had found out through the press and through the court itself,” declared Jordano Abreu, the lawyer of the bidder who acquired the property.
He explained that she is a Belgian citizen, a real estate businesswoman with various investments in Las Terreras, and became interested when she saw that it was an auction that could yield "good results in the real estate market".
The report stated that the public auction sale was carried out despite the ruling of the Second Chamber of the Civil and Commercial Court of Appeals of the Judicial Department of Santiago, which compensated the companies Comercial Tomillo and Edificaciones Ignacio Gómez with the sum of US$223,722.48.
“This was known to Edificaciones Ignacio Gómez, since this sentence has been challenged by them before the Supreme Court of Justice, meaning that they could not claim ignorance that their credit was extinguished and that they could not continue the execution procedure under those conditions,” explains the lawyer for Comercial Tomillo.
Caroline Reviglio, president of Comercial Tomillo, explained that in 2018, when the debt was settled, the company Ignacio Gómez continued to attack them “abusively” and “to this day, a sale has been organized based on a non-existent debt. We don't understand how that person was able to organize that sale of all the apartments in Samaná two months ago.”.
The complex is located within an area of 15,000 square meters.
Those affected are now seeking to reverse the public auction sale, returning to court with evidence of what they say are irregularities in the process, El Informe reported.
Reviglio said they weren't even notified that the property would be put up for sale at public auction.
