Taken from the newspaper Hoy
SANTO DOMINGO.- According to the request for coercive measures in Operation Calamar, specifically on pages 149, 152 and 153, the current director of the State Land Titling Technical Unit, Mérido Torres, appears as one of the beneficiaries with figures that reach more than 32 million pesos, for the expropriation of public lands.
The document, which is over 2,000 pages long, details that the official and mayoral candidate for the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) is the "alleged owner" along with other people of a portion of land in parcel 613, of Cadastral District number 32, municipality of Boca Chica, province of Santo Domingo; covered by title certificate 46572, with a surface area of 168,966.00 square meters, expropriated by decree no. 1159, dated nineteen (19)
September of the year 1955.
"While the accused Ángel Gilberto Lockward Mella received more than one hundred and fifty million Dominican pesos (DOP 150,000,000.00), paid in his personal capacity and through intermediaries, such as the company Ángel Lockward & Asociados, SRL, Joar Emil Ortiz Hernández, and Mérido de Jesús Torres Espinal," the prosecution's indictment states.
“These alleged debts were acknowledged through credit assignments that lacked a certain date and had not been notified to the executing institution, that is, the General Directorate of National Assets, at the time of the preparation and signing of the transactional agreement. However, the amounts of these debts were established in the distribution scheduled for the first payment, up to 80% of their value,” the file details.
At the disposal of the justice system
In August of last year, 2022, one of the official's lawyers clarified that the list of financial reports headed by Donald Guerrero, in which his name is mentioned, has nothing to do with the institution he currently directs, since they are files kept in his capacity as a lawyer from his private office, and before assuming the public function he performs today.
“I, Mérido Torres, as a lawyer, received the family members of Mr. Moisés Reyes O Ben in my private office in 2018, and they granted me a power of attorney with which we initiated a lawsuit for fair compensation against the Dominican State before the Superior Administrative Court (TSA). By the end of 2019, we had obtained a ruling that ordered payment to that family,” he explained.
He added: “I am willing to go to the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (PEPCA), if required to collaborate with the investigations. We welcome the actions of an independent Public Prosecutor's Office.”.
He reiterated that he did not receive money from the Dominican State, but rather payment of his professional fees from those clients for the process carried out by his private law firm and as a settlement.
