Attorney Julio Cury described the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Seized Assets Unit as an appendix that exercises functions outside the law and for which it is manifestly incompetent. He said that since Law No. 72-02 on Money Laundering, seized assets have had to be managed by the Office for the Custody and Care of Seized Assets (OCABID).
He explained that this responsibility was transferred, in accordance with Law No. 60-23, to the recently created National Institute for the Custody and Administration of Seized, Confiscated and Forfeited Assets (INCABIDE), which is ineffective because the aforementioned department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is retaining them in “clear violation of the law and subverting the constitutional order.”
According to the renowned jurist, the illegal custody of the seized assets by the Public Prosecutor’s Office highlights “the irreverence of certain members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the rule of law.” He pointed out that, due to the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Constitutional Court has expressed “its deepest concern”, calling on it to comply with the law. He cited as examples the rulings TC/0715/18, TC/0733/18, TC/0249/19, TC/0290/19, TC/0293/21, TC/0263/23 and TC/0277/24 of 15 August.
Cury said that the principle of legality, for the prosecutors of the Seized Property Unit, is “dwindling and purely nominal, since its roadmap is ostensibly arbitrary, so if the High Administrative Court does not toughen its criteria and begins to jointly condemn the prosecutors who engage in wilful or imprudent illegal actions and omissions, we risk perishing as a State of law.”
He denounced that the prosecutors of the Seized Property Unit, headed by Damia Veloz Hernández, refuse to hand over seized property to people in whose favor acquittal sentences or orders of no place have been issued that have acquired the character of res judicata. “It is a taste that they have taken with seized property that the Minister of Finance, Jochi Vicente, who presides over the Board of Directors of INCABIDE, must claim, as mandated by Law No. 60-23, the transfer of property that is illegally held under seizure by the Public Ministry,” said the jurist.
