SANTO DOMINGO.- A real estate scam was reported by several families who allegedly paid for the purchase of apartments in a tower located in the Renacimiento sector of the National District, from where some were evicted.
Engineer Jorge Freddy Figuereo de los Santos is the builder identified as responsible for the events and who allegedly committed a double mortgage, incurring debts that he could not pay off, which is why he allegedly lost the Cofisa tower, located on Manolo Tavarez Justo street in the Dominican capital.
An investigation presented on the night of Monday, January 15, 2024, in the “Report with Alicia Ortega”, revealed that de los Santos, even though he had a mortgage-backed loan contract with Banco de Reservas for 62.5 million pesos, incurred 4 additional loans for more than US$5 million with the commercial company TLI Investments, supposedly to finish the property.
“And upon receiving those 4 loans and being unable to pay them, he lost the tower by virtue of an adjudication ruling that resulted in Mr. Julio Colón, who lived in tower 8A, being dispossessed,” revealed lawyer José Aníbal Guzmán, legal representative of the victims, to El Informe.
According to the documents, the contract between Reservas and engineer de los Santos was signed on July 6, 2012, agreeing that the debtor could not mortgage the property to another financial entity, company or association without the prior written knowledge of the bank.
De los Santos had taken out loans from another financial institution, despite having a mortgage clause in the National District title registry, according to documents presented on the aforementioned program.
The initial loan to the finance company was made, according to the documents, on December 1, 2014, with Jorge Freddy Figuereo de los Santos as the debtor, authorizing the registration of a conventional mortgage in first rank for more than US$2 million, a second one on August 6, 2015 for 800 thousand dollars, another on May 12, 2016 for one million dollars, and the fourth mortgage on February 3, 2017 for more than 1.5 million dollars.
The complainants
Marcelino Báez, a retired major general in the armed forces, and his wife, Delma Matos, recounted that in 2014 they paid the engineer 9.5 million pesos for apartment 2B in the aforementioned tower. Initially, Figuereo de los Santos allegedly told them the apartment cost around US$296,000, but that he would reduce the price if they paid in cash.
The builder had promised the property would be delivered in 2015, but tired of waiting, they decided to move in in 2020, having to finish some of the construction work. Six months later, they were evicted.
Julio Colón, for his part, explained that after working in the United States for more than 40 years, he purchased unit 8A in the Cofisa tower for 8 million pesos. He made a down payment of RD$650,000 on July 26, 2013, and completed the full payment in 2018. “I told him we needed the apartment, he said yes, gave me the keys, we spent Christmas with the family, everything was perfect,” the affected party stated.
Colón acquired a second apartment, 10B, for his son for RD$8 million, confident that everything was in order with the property. “When we bought it, it was financed through Banco de Reservas, and that gave us confidence because it's a government bank.”.
Clara Castro, Colón's wife, recounts that the eviction was frustrating and that they have filed a lawsuit against the engineer to try to recover their investment.
On June 4, 2014, Raúl Almonte and his family acquired an apartment unit in the Cofisa tower. “We bought it from an engineer named Jorge Freddy de los Santos, who sold us a unit of 240-something square meters for a total of 8.6 million pesos,” he explained.
He said that he paid an initial RD$4.7 million for unit 7B. He recounted that the engineer told them that the delivery would be the following year, a date that was extended “with stories and tales”, until they learned, through their lawyer, of the situation in which the tower was located.
They filed a lawsuit, but the ruling declared Figuereo de los Santos not guilty of fraud, exonerating him from all criminal responsibility, although he was ordered to pay the sum of RD$4.7 million to Almonte and RD$1.5 million as compensation for damages.
Another affected resident is Elsa de Jesús, who signed a contract with the engineer in June 2014 to sell him her two-story house in exchange for an apartment in one of his towers. “I see the two years go by; I always pass by there and see how the construction is progressing. About five years later, there's a knock on my door, and I hear a commotion of three or four vehicles. They deliver a letter calling us squatters and giving us three days to vacate the house.”.
Brasil Jiménez, the lawyer for the latter affected party, recounted that they found that the apartment that corresponded to de Jesús was awarded to the company TLI Investments and that the lady's home was transferred to the name of another person.
Source: The Report with Alicia Ortega, January 15, 2024.
