People still claim they own drug kingpin’s assets, official says

Santo Doming.- There are people who are still claiming drug kingpin Quirino Paulino’s assets, the head of the Drug’s Council’s Anti-money Laundering Committee revealed Thursday.

Dulce Luciano said there are still people who claim Paulino’s properties in San Juan de la Maguana, “assets they say they bought." She revealed that they’ve initiated criminal proceedings against persons who take taken over those properties.

The official said Paulino’s case is even more complicated because there’s no matching sentence from his plea bargaining which in her view wasn’t clear. "If they were next to the lands they sold to Quirino, what they’ve done is to take then over again and for us it’s so difficult that we have ongoing criminal proceedings against people who are squatting on those properties again."

Luciano added that that has kept the authorities from taking over the properties despite definitive sentences, because they still have problems with people who sold lands to the former Army captain, now being held in the U.S. where he’s allegedly cooperating with federal prosecutors.