We also got the deputy prime minister to speak about the recent revelations of major land fraud and estate theft:
Jules Vasquez
"Systemic land fraud and estate theft, which is, of the many, the various types of land fraud, is perhaps one of the most pernicious because, you know, it requires so many levels of fraudulence at the Supreme Court level."
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"It's scary. It's scary when you consider that persons have died and quite possibly linked to these things. You're dealing with a different level of opportunism and different level of criminality and a different level of wickedness altogether."
"And I don't know that you necessarily can liquidate that, can destroy that in the shortest possible time. I think it's about us trying to get our structures in place where we get it right, about trying to have some regulation that will regulate these real estate cats, because the truth of the matter is they've been having a free run at it for the longest time, and these guys are so -called land agents, and they also pretend to be attorneys and financial experts and all kinds of stuff, and they're very clever, very smooth, very savvy, because they are able to convince very wealthy people to get off their money."
"We've done our whole internal examination of lots of these accounts. In the case of the Borja case, we've reviewed over 300 transaction instruments that Borja and his consulting company, I think it's JC Consulting or something, that they actually presented to the land's department."
"80 percent, damn near 80 percent of those were incomplete. They triggered some interaction, got an instrument number, but they never followed through. Because they came, they triggered an interaction with the land's registry, and through that process, they are able to get what would be the relevant fees, relevant duties that have to be paid, but they don't come back."
Jules Vasquez
"And then on the other end, there's someone making a collection from the land purchasers, and they're being told $60,000 for the stamp duty, but then somebody pockets that, and it never ends up with the government, and these people end up with the land, and then they find out that the stamp duty hasn't been paid. There are such cases."
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"It's a fraud against those persons. It's a fraud against the state because they are the purported to be collecting this money to go to pay the lands department so that you can complete the private land transfer. They don't pay. Lots of these people are out of money by hundreds of thousands of dollars, can't get their property. They show up at the lands department believing that they've paid all their relative, their relevant fees, and come for the land paper only to find out that, you know what, you have to start this process all over again, and all that money that you farked out, never reached, never reached the lands department."
"So we can't, we can't complete that transaction. So then these persons come to the lands department fully expecting that they'll get their title to their nice. swanky property, because you're talking about properties and placencia in some of the finest places in all this country and then they come to the lands department and they're out of pocket retirement money everything they've had and they can't pay the stamp duty so they can't get that land transferred in their name."
