Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela instructed his country’s attorney general to initiate legal proceedings to ensure the defense of the interests of the Panamanian State in the lawsuit filed by Costa Rican politician and businessman Antonio Álvarez Desanti.
The dispute is for the ownership of four farms that, according to the Panamanian government, are located within Ngäbe Buglé region and were sold to Álvarez in 2009 by a group of Panamanian lawyers.
After initiating permits for tourism development, a Panaminian entity determined that the properties acquired were located in a different territory instead of the previous judicial stipulations.
Therefore, Álvarez denounced a “covert expropriation” as the Panamanian government took the land from the investment group without compensation. Likewise, the investor group filed a $ 100 million lawsuit (about 57 billion colones) for damages against the Panamanian state.
The neighboring government said that the transaction is about “fraudulent processes of acquisitive prescription of land and with illegality,” according to La Prensa newspaper.