Lifestyle Holidays: slander campaign harms us, the country

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.- The Lifestyle Holidays Group on Wed. said it’s the victim of a slander campaign against its image, based on a legal process which it affirms, “must find a solution in the courts and not in public opinion.”

The company, which said it provides 4,500 direct jobs in the Puerto Plata area, said “astounding reports” against it affect the Dominican Republic as a tourism destination.

The Group cited the announced hearing before the Superior Administrative Court (TSA) over an alleged tax evasion of RD$15.0 billion and notes that the report, “makes it clear that the lies have short legs.”

It cautions that their detractors place false headlines in newspapers from other competing destinations, as in Cancun, “which allude to an alleged mafia of time sharing” in the Dominican Republic, “doing a disservice to the country and contributing to the creation of an image unfavorable for Dominican tourism.”

The campaign “is financed by external economic agents who have not been able to take root in the Dominican Republic and have failed because of bad business and worse practices.”

Lifestyles said the alleged slanderers whom it didn’t name seek “to create a distorted perception with the hope of influencing the courts, something that will not happen because the truth and the strength of the evidence will have to be imposed.”

It adds that on seven occasions, in different aspects of litigation, the company has obtained court rulings, such as the Civil and Commercial Chamber of the Court of First Instance of Puerto Plata and the First and Third Chambers of the TSA.