The perpetrators of the fraud intended to show that the Costa Dorada company had undergone a series of share transfers that excluded the partners and those from whom they had acquired their shares from the registry, even from the Costa Dorada partner history.
SANTO DOMINGO.-Forgery of signatures of deceased persons and notaries, use of names and identity cards of people to place them as supposed shareholders, creation of a fictitious corporate history, among other violations, involve the fraud against the company Costa Dorada, whose property covers more than 6 million 300 thousand square meters in a beach area in the community of Sabana Buey, Peravia province.
The Mayol and Serrano families, legitimate owners of the Costa Dorada company, expressed their fear at a press conference last July that the Second Collegiate Court of the National District would hear the case against two of the defendants in the fraud case without waiting for the results of the appeal filed by the affected parties before the First Chamber of the Court of Appeals of the National District against the decision of the Seventh Court of Instruction of that district, which excluded them from the process, despite having been recognized by the Seventh Court of Instruction as the real owners of the shares of the aforementioned company, as revealed by the Fox Magazine RD website.
The plaintiffs stated that more than 5 years have passed since they filed the complaints against Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado, Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, Judith Franchesca Aguasvivas Báez, and the Global Multibusiness Corporation, and they are still fighting for the courts to recognize their rights.
We reproduce the story published today by Listín Diario, about this new real estate scam:
Everything was going well until the first months of 2013, with no suspicion of difficulties or strange dealings hovering around the operations of the Costa Dorada company in Baní.
But that changed radically that year when one day its partners decided to carry out, before the Commercial Registry of the Chamber of Commerce and Production of Santo Domingo, the procedures for the transformation of that company into a Limited Liability Company (SRL), complying with law 478-08 on commercial entities.
The plaintiffs at a press conference in July of this year. (External source).
To their astonishment, the documentation for the procedure was not accepted there because, as their corporate lawyers were informed, the company had already been transformed and registered as an Individual Limited Liability Company (EIRL) in the name of Luis Américo Minervino Ducoudray, a name unknown to the actual partners.
Then, upon requesting documentation on the alleged transformation, they discovered that other people had drafted and deposited dozens of false documents in the Commercial Registry, such as stock sale contracts, minutes of meetings, financial statements, sworn statements and other corporate documents.
The transfers
The perpetrators of the fraud intended to show that the Costa Dorada company had undergone a series of share transfers that excluded the partners and those from whom they had acquired their shares from the registry, even from the Costa Dorada partner history.
Also, in May 2013, the company's partners verified that the General Directorate of Internal Taxes authorized the modification by transformation, under Law 479-08 on Commercial Companies and Individual Limited Liability Companies, of the registration in the National Taxpayer Registry (RNC) of that company, making it appear as an EIRL owned by Luis Américo Minervino Ducoudray.
Minervino in trouble
It was this discovery that motivated the companies Hilari Mayol, SAS, Mayol & Co., SRL, Grand Cays Corporation and Okra Company, Ltd. to sue Luis Américo Minervino Ducoudray for the annulment of the acts of sale of shares.
The Fourth Chamber of the Civil and Commercial Court of First Instance of the National District was assigned that lawsuit.
But when that lawsuit was about to be decided, the lawyer Ricardo Elías Soto Subero, an active Army colonel who had intervened in the process as the alleged representative of Costa Dorada, SRL, which was also illegally represented by Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, requested a reopening of the debates.
The lawyer and military officer argued that the defendant, Luis Américo Minervino Ducoudray, had died on February 2, 2010, and attached a death certificate of that person as proof of his request.
Following this request to reopen debates, the lawyers of Hilari Mayol, SAS, Mayol & Co., SRL, Grand Cays Corporation and Okra Company, Ltd., legitimate partners of Costa Dorada, requested from the Commercial Registry of the Chamber of Commerce and Production of Santo Domingo all the documentation registered about the affected company.
Beneficiaries of the fraud
Then, the documentation provided by the Chamber of Commerce revealed that the final beneficiaries of the fraudulent chain of share transfers were Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, daughter of Colonel Soto Subero, depositor of Minervino's death certificate, and the Global Multibusiness Corporation, a company whose partners are the same military officer, his children and the lawyer Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado.
According to Costa Dorada's legal representation, this revealed "the existence of a large fraud, its dimensions, the maneuvers carried out, including the production and deposit of false documentation, the phases in which it was executed and who the authors and beneficiaries were" of these criminal operations.
The march of justice
The criminal proceedings against the accused are still underway, since their inception on March 21, 2018, when the companies Hilari Mayol, SAS, Mayol & Co., SRL, Grand Cays Corporation and Okra Co., Ltd. filed a complaint with the National District Prosecutor's Office, with civil status, against Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado, Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, Reynaldo Elías Soto Sánchez and Judith Franchesca Aguasvivas Báez.
On October 12, 2020, the Ninth Court of Instruction acting as the Judicial Office of Permanent Attention Services imposed coercive measures against Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado, and on the 29th of that same month and year, precautionary measures were issued to Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito and Judith Franchesca Aguasvivas Báez.
To reach this stage of the legal process, the plaintiff companies had to overcome the common obstacles of the Dominican justice system, including the replacement of five investigating prosecutors, to whom they had to explain the fraudulent scheme in detail and hand over most of the documentation again.
On April 13, 2021, Magistrate Elizabeth Tucent Hiraldo, District Attorney of the National District, filed the indictment and request for trial against Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado, Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, and Judith Francesca Aguasvivas Báez, as co-authors of the crimes of criminal association, falsification of private documents, and use of false private documents.
For their part, the companies Hilari Mayol, SAS, Mayol & Co., SRL, Grand Cays Corporation and Okra Company Ltd. filed a private accusation against these people on July 13, 2021, as co-perpetrators of the events.
In the middle of the preliminary hearing and when the judge questioned the possibility of unifying the accusations, the public prosecutor joined the private accusers' accusations and adopted them as his own.
Reopening of the trial
The Seventh Court of Instruction of the National District ordered the opening of the criminal trial against Rafael Olegario Helena Regalado and Ailec Paloma Soto Garabito, as co-authors of the crimes of criminal association and falsification of authentic and commercial deeds and favored with a non-applicable order the lawyer Judith Franchesca Aguasvivas Báez.
According to the defense of the Costa Dorada company, the decision of the preliminary hearing, despite containing a referral to trial, creates "a disastrous precedent" against the right of property and to act in justice "against the holders of shares and/or social quotas of companies that operate in the Dominican Republic.".
He believes that the judge, despite recognizing Hilari Mayol, Mayol & Co, Grand Cays Corporation and Okra Company as legitimate shareholders of Costa Dorada in his ruling, “denied them the right to file a complaint and declared them without standing to claim in justice that criminal and civil sanctions be imposed on those accused of committing this multimillion-dollar fraud against them.”.
This was done, he points out, “under the incorrect understanding that it was the Costa Dorada society that had the right to take action against the people who had committed the falsehoods.”.
“The judge failed to understand that the shares belong to their owners, not to the company,” they say.
Sources: Fox Magazine RD/Listín Diario.
Cover photo: Listín Diario.
