SANTO DOMINGO- The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD) explained yesterday that the sale process of parcel 102-B, of Cadastral District number 4, of the National District, land where the old "El Coco" Greyhound Track was located, was a transaction that was executed through a "transparent and competitive process".
The statement was made through the Committee on Policy Realization (Copra) Support Structure.
In the document issued after the newspaper Diario Libre published the information about the sale, the BCRD explained that it acquired, among other properties, the aforementioned plot of land from the entity Financiera Hipotecas y Pagarés, C. por A., then in the process of liquidation, represented by the Superintendent of Banks, through a purchase and sale agreement dated March 18, 1994.
“It should be noted that the receipt of this and other assets was motivated by a decision of the Monetary Board, as a counterpart to the payments made by the Central Bank to the depositors of the financial institutions that went bankrupt in the 1980s,” the institution states.
He added that these assets, which have been received from entities in liquidation, “are being sold by COPRA, a department created by the Monetary Board, for the liquidation of the assets transferred from said entities.”.
It states that, as part of its procedure, “COPRA always publishes in newspapers of national circulation and on the website of the Central Bank, all the assets for sale (…) proceeding to set the price according to the valuation carried out by independent appraisers.
The Central Bank specifies that as a result of the publication made on November 22, 2019, “several real estate developers showed interest in acquiring, including the one that was awarded the contract.”.
The latter, he specifies, “made a cash offer on February 21, 2020, in accordance with the amount published by the Central Bank for sale purposes.”.
According to the BC, the first publications, which took place between 2017 and July 2020, resulted in purchase offers that did not meet the bank's requirements, either due to purchase price issues or lack of required documentation.
It states that on August 6, 2020, COPRA approved the purchase offer, and the Central Bank proceeded to accept and award the aforementioned plot to the company CBS Developments Nuevas Terrazas, SRL, thus completing the sale.
The institution pointed out that “the company CBS Developments Nuevas Terrazas, SRL, through a communication dated August 19, 2021, requested COPRA to change the subscribing legal entity to replace it with the company CBS Developments, SRL, in order to formalize the purchase and sale transaction before the Registry of Titles, a request that was accepted, after evaluation, and the purchase and sale contract was signed on October 8, 2021.”.
What Bonilla said
In its edition yesterday, Diario Libre reported on the sale of those lands to a company in which the Minister of Housing, Habitat and Buildings (MIVED), Carlos Bonilla Sánchez, is a partner
When questioned yesterday about the purchase of the land for the dog track, Bonilla Sánchez suggested that journalists contact the company directly, since he is no longer an employee of any private company.
The plot in question has an area of 154,218 square meters and was sold for a value of 298 million pesos to the company CBS Developments on October 8, 2021, the date of the signing of the contract.
About CBS Development
CBS Developments was founded in 2000 by Bonilla, whose sworn statement of assets filed in 2020 indicates that he was the company's principal shareholder with 99 shares. He also states that he joined the company in January 2000 and left in September 2020, although he continues to attend shareholder meetings.
