SANTO DOMINGO - Part of the land that an investor is allegedly buying from its occupants in the Pedernales and Barahona area is located on a plot that is in a legal dispute in the real estate jurisdiction of Barahona, promoted by the Dominican State.
This is plot 40, located in Enriquillo, Barahona, which the State is trying to recover, as it did previously with others in the Bahía de las Águilas area, because they were acquired fraudulently by private individuals, Listín Diario reports this Saturday.
The Dominican State is represented in this process by a team of lawyers, composed of Gustavo Biaggi Pumarol, Blas Minaya Nolasco, Manuel Cáceres Genao, Samuel Ramia and Laura Acosta.
In addition, the Dominican Agrarian Institute, National Assets, and the Attorney General's Office, through the State Attorney of the Central Department, are involved in the litigation.
The owner is the State
“That plot 40 is the property of the Dominican State and the transfers that were made on it were based on fraudulent actions that cannot generate rights in any way,” lawyer Laura Acosta told Listín Diario.
That plot of land is where the properties allegedly purchased by an investor for more than 130 million pesos from a large number of squatters belong, according to information provided by lawyer Rubén Manuel Matos Suárez to Listín Diario correspondent Odalis Báez in Pedernales.
Yesterday the media published a report on the purchase of land with tourist potential in the province of Pedernales and surrounding areas, with the title "Pedernales in the spotlight of the appetite for land with tourist potential".
Legal dispute
Lawyer Laura Acosta explained that in the litigation over registered lands that was initially initiated by the Dominican State, several parcels were included, but that in the process that culminated with a final judgment only parcel 215-A remained, which in its entirety is now the property of the Dominican State, with a judgment with the authority of res judicata.
He explained that with regard to parcel 40, the Dominican State had registered an opposition and was also involved in the criminal proceedings opened in 1997.
He pointed out that as a result of the real estate process that concluded with the sentence on parcel 215-A, in the first instance, parcel 40 was excluded from the litigation, the court alleging that it was not initially included, but was added later.
Fraud
Acosta explained that the fraud in the case of parcel 215-A consisted of a transfer made irregularly by the IAD, and then that institution invented some false agricultural settlements.
“In the case of plot 40, the fraudulent procedure was different: Titles were issued in favor of supposed plot owners, based on official documents from the IAD that had nothing to do with agrarian reform settlements,” he noted.
He indicated that individuals managed to transfer property rights through official documents from the IAD in the 1990s, and then alleged sales contracts from those individuals to third parties, companies, and individuals who claim to be legitimate owners because they were good faith purchasers also appeared.
Land was transferred to hundreds of people, some deceased and others unaware of the transfer.
Nullity of titles
2014
In 2014, Judge Alba Beard Marcos, of the Eighth Chamber of the National District Land Court, declared 1,200 property titles issued to private individuals null and void, as well as all transfers, real estate transactions, land surveys, subdivisions, consolidations, and any other operations or transactions carried out in Bahía de las Águilas, Pedernales, from 1990 to the present, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Dominican State. This ruling was upheld in 2016 by the Superior Land Court and later, in 2018, by the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ).
