After almost nine years since the first illegal dispossessions in Tulum, the owners of hotels and estates seek to recover their properties. They expect help from the new government of Quintana Roo, which is investigating the former governor.
Owners of 44 hotels in Tulum, seized during Roberto Borge’s administration, seek to recover their properties with the help of the current administration, the Reforma newspaper reported on Monday Feb. 6.
Former Quintana Roo Governor Roberto Borge at a press conference during his mandate (Photo: Animal Político)
According to information given to the Mexican newspaper by Eddie Villa Real, representative of the Association of Colonos Hoteleros Ecológicos de Pino Suárez AC, the current representatives of the government of Quintana Roo — led by Gov. Carlos Joaquín González — are supporting them to find a quick way to return to them the possession of their hotels.
In Borge’s term (2011-2016), magistrates, judges, actuaries, state and municipal officials were part of a network that stripped 44 hotels and 19 lands in Tulum using false documents and leases.
Eddie Villa Real informed newspaper Reforma that among the officials who helped to dispossess properties with a total value of $615 million dollars are the president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the State, Fidel Villanueva Rivero; the director of the Public Registry of Property, Carlos Lima Carbajal; the first civil judge of Playa del Carmen, Gustavo Efrain Chan Camaal; and the actuary María Elena Anaya Reyes.
Hotel dispossession in Tulum began in 2008 with the eviction of the Hotel Ocho Tulum through a false lease trial. In June 2016, the newspaper Reforma published the case of 17 hotels and three beach properties that were violently evicted in the same way with a court order issued through an illegal oral trial using counterfeit contracts.
According to an investigation by Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity, in addition to the dispossession of hotels in Tulum, condominiums and luxury apartments were embargoed in Cancun and were later sold at half price to public officials during the Borge administration.
The work of the officials involved in these cases was to legalize acts through false documentation. The complaints from the businessmen affected reached Governor Borge but he only responded by creating a dialogue table in which former Labor Secretary Patricio Peña and Undersecretary Enrique de la Cruz Pineda participated.
The hotel owners are currently waiting for the return of their lands, and former Governor Borge is under investigation for expensive trips abroad and irregular management during his mandate, which allegedly left an embezzlement of 25 billion pesos.
Source: http://www.animalpolitico.com/
