The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MMARN) stated this Friday that, just as the country avoided the irregular appropriations in Bahía de las Águilas, the Dominican State is going to counter in the courts the lawsuits of people who claim the payment of billions of pesos, alleging supposed property rights over almost all of the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park.
Máximo Hernández, one of the lawyers of MMARN’s Legal Department, explained that the case is very similar to that of Bahía de las Águilas, since the Dominican State is seeking that the courts annul the successive and subsequent real estate transfers that took place in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park after it was declared a protected area, contrary to the legal framework.
Hernández spoke to journalists who approached him after the Second Chamber of the Superior Administrative Court (TSA) extended the hearings of the two lawsuits in the case, because the court secretariat had to notify the Administrative Attorney General’s Office and because the Jaragua Group and Acción Verde requested, through their lawyer Nelson Pimentel, to be included in the process. The environmentalists requested the voluntary intervention, since it is a fundamental right of collective interest.
Judges Úrsula Carrasco Márquez, María Guillermina Calderón Abreu and Willys de Jesús Núñez set the next hearing for March 22, at 9:00 am.
Present for the Public Prosecutor’s Office were Luis Hernán Matos, from the Attorney General’s Office, and Mayra Henríquez, from the Administrative Attorney General’s Office.
Hernández, who was accompanied by lawyers Rossy Miguelina Pérez Martínez, Carlos González and Robinson Cuello Shanlatte, explained that the proceedings are based on the lawsuits filed by Tomás Rosendo Dante Castillo and DC International, SRL, over plots 3250 and 4213, located within the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park.
He explained that, although some media could have been confused, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources exercised its defense mechanisms in a timely and reasoned manner.
“The Ministry has never stopped defending itself and is reiterating it in this opportunity, where it intends to revert all the failures or faults that there were in the instruction of the process in the past,” he indicated.
“So that the court or courts that are hearing these seven processes, have sufficient evidence to prove that these claims are inadmissible because they are claims that link protected areas, which are public property, patrimony of the entire nation and that cannot be subject to any kind of sale,” said Hernandez.
Source: Presidencia.gob.do
