This is the first time a Dominican court has carried out a seizure of this scale in a single decision, this time linked to a corruption network in CESTUR
SANTO DOMINGO– A total of 422 assets, both movable and immovable, were seized in a single ruling, including properties, luxury vehicles, bank accounts, cash, weapons, and technological equipment, according to the ruling issued by the First Collegiate Court of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the National District, which will be read in full on August 14, 2026.
Former officials Adán Benoni Cáceres Silvestre, Juan Carlos Torres Robiou and Rafael Núñez de Aza were sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment each.
Sentence No. 249-02-2026-SSEN-00040, file 062-2022-EPEN-00201, condemned 20 natural persons and declared six legal entities guilty of crimes ranging from prevarication, embezzlement and fraud against the State to aggravated money laundering.
The properties
There are 170 registered units, apartments, houses, farms, commercial premises, plots of land, industrial buildings, that the First Collegiate Court of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the National District ordered to be seized from those involved in the corruption network of the Specialized Tourist Security Corps (CESTUR).
The inventory of assets to be seized, which occupies 47 of the 89 pages of the document, is, by volume and diversity, what distinguishes this ruling from any other in the country's judicial history:
Farms in the Northwest Line. Luxury apartments in Gazcue and Altos de Arroyo Hondo. Anentire four-level commercial plaza in Los Alcarrizos. Cattle ranches in San Pedro de Macorís. Condominiums in Las Terrenas. Land in Punta Cana. Homes in Jarabacoa. Properties in Santiago, La Vega, Monte Plata, Samaná, La Romana, Duarte, and La Altagracia.
In 2021, when the request for pretrial detention was submitted, a total of 119 properties were included, amounting to more than two billion five hundred million Dominican pesos (RD$2,500,000,000.00) seized up to that point as part of the operation, in which there were then 13 defendants, mostly military personnel. In the final ruling, the number of those implicated rose to 20.
The document requesting coercive measures, prepared by the Public Prosecutor's Office, states "that said properties have been acquired by the defendants with money from acts of corruption.".
The total: 170 properties distributed across ten categories
The court order lists the seized assets under paragraph Thirty-Second, which is the section of the ruling where the court orders the confiscation in favor of the Dominican State. Based on that text, the count results in the following distribution:
- Commercial Plaza: 1 building (Plaza Randa Internacional, Los Alcarrizos, 1,960.83 m²) plus 44 commercial premises distributed over four levels, plus 3 adjoining properties totaling an additional 3,807.13 m². Total of the Plaza Randa complex: 48 registered units.
- Apartments: 35 units in condominiums in the National District, Santo Domingo East, Santo Domingo West, Santiago, Samaná, San Pedro de Macorís, and La Altagracia. The identified areas range from 41 m² to 385.45 m².
- Houses and residences: 10 properties. The one most detailed in the document is Colinas del Oeste (151 Cordillera Septentrional Street, 538.10 m²), which the court describes as having a swimming pool, a kiosk with a grill, a gym, a nightclub, a bar, a DJ area, solar panels, and even a bunker stocked with high-end drinks. The court document directly links it to Rafael Núñez de Aza.
- Mixed-use or industrial buildings: 4 structures, including the warehouse on Charles de Gaulle Avenue (between Luperón E and Pedro Henrique Ureña streets, Santo Domingo East), which groups eleven properties merged into a single property with a two-level warehouse-type construction in iron, aluminum and glass.
- Farms, estates and ranches: 15 properties, including Hacienda Kelman (San Pedro de Macorís) with 1,131 pigs, 30 goats and 70 sheep; a poultry farm in Río Verde Abajo with twenty-one thousand laying hens; a poultry/livestock farm in Sabana Grande de Boyá; and the so-called Finca de los Generales in Los Botados de Yamasá (Monte Plata), of approximately 500 tareas planted with cocoa.
- Agricultural land: approximately 20 plots. The largest are two properties in the Rincón Fogón Section, Hoyo Oscuro, Sabana de la Mar (Hato Mayor), with 1,775,752 m² and 110,143 m² respectively; and a pineapple farm in Chirino, Monte Plata, which combines plots with a total area exceeding 23 million square meters.
- Urban land: 15 plots, mostly in the Colinas del Oeste urbanization (Santo Domingo Oeste), with parcels ranging from 302.25 m² to parcel 97 of Cadastral District 04 with 76,908 m².
- Properties in Santiago and other provinces: approximately 20 properties, mostly in the name of Julio Camilo de los Santos Viola and his spouse Angélica María Alba Trinidad, which include land in Las Damas, Residencial Jardines del Licey, Residencial Nicolás Vargas and the La Chiva urbanization, with areas ranging from 167 m² to 31,806.09 m² in a single property.
- Individual commercial premises: 5 units in plazas of the National District: the JM Printing Press in Plaza San Martín (Villa Juana), two apartment-premises in Torre Elsa (Gazcue), one premises in Plaza Madelta and one premises in Plaza Gazcue known as Compu Help.
The only thing that has a price
Of the 170 properties, the judicial device assigns explicit monetary value to exactly two: the parcels numbered 290 and 291 in the ruling, both in parcel 31-A of Cadastral District 08, in Monte Plata, Sabana Grande de Boyá.
The first, measuring 29,003.25 m², was valued at RD$15.00 per square meter: RD$435,048.75. The second, measuring 48,516.25 m², at RD$13.00 per meter: RD$630,711.25. Together they total RD$1,065,760.00.
These are two rural properties whose declared value, when added together, does not reach the price of the improvements in the National District. The rest of the seized assets—the commercial plaza, the luxury apartments, the ranches, the farms—lack an appraisal in the court document, and their valuation will be the responsibility of the Judge of Sentence Execution and the Attorney General's Office.
The context
The sentence is the result of a process that formally began in 2022 (file 062-2022-EPEN-00201), although the coercive measures and the raids that produced much of the evidence date from April and May 2021.
Raúl Alejandro Girón Jiménez, one of the convicted men, had been under house arrest since May 5, 2021; the court calculated that five years, one month and ten days had passed at the time of sentencing, equivalent to a sentence served, and rejected the request for conditional suspension for that reason.
The court was composed of judges Esmirna Gisselle Méndez Álvarez (presiding judge), Tania H. Yunes Sánchez (substitute presiding judge), and Jissel Y. Naranjo Tejada (member). The secretary is Pamela Corcino Polanco.
The full ruling, which includes the factual and legal grounds, the evaluation of evidence, and the analysis of each defendant, will be read on August 14, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. in the same courtroom of the Ciudad Nueva Courthouse. Until then, the only official document available is the ruling itself, which is the sole source for this report.
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