Real Estate

Investigation starts into haunted land deal

Carlos Lemos/ LA PRENSA

Haunted: Alcides Linares was surprised to learn that his mother signed over an Isla Tobago estate eight years after she had died.953265

Leonor Rivera Vázquez found herself sitting on a figurative gold mine when her property on Isla Tobago skyrocketed in value as Panama´s real estate boom took off in the early part of this century.

And, in an apparent act of great generosity, she decided to hand over her holdings to an attorney named Rosa Díaz Aguilar, even going herself to the offices of notary Emeterio Miller to sign the paperwork that would complete the transaction on Dec. 9, 2006.

This came as a suprise to Vázquez´s son, Alcides Linares, who went to check on the status of the land in November of this year. He was shocked to find that his mother had gone to a notary´s office to sign the paperwork in 2006, since she had died eight years earlier, in 1998.

"It's incredible. My mother rose from the grave to make a donation!" Linares said.

Naturally, he decided to start making inquiries as to how his dead mother was able to sign paperwork giving away land he thought belonged to him. His investigations led him to the Registro Público in Colón, where, according to records, staff member Paulina de Hoyos completed the entire transaction in less than two hours.

Anyone who has had dealings with the Registro Público knows that completing such a transaction is usually a lengthy process requiring numerous trips to the Registro´s offices and extensive documentation certifying, among other things, that the person allegedly selling the land hasn´t been dead for almost a decade.

Yet, dead or not, Vázquez somehow managed to transfer two hectares of land on Isla Toboga to Aguilar, a plot known as "El Naranjal," which is a few meters from the beach and behind a luxury hotel project. Since prices in the area have skyrocketed, the land could be worth up to $100 per square meter, or about $2 million.

Understandably, Linares is at a loss to explain how the land ended up in someone else´s name.

"The papers are completely fraudulent," he said. "I do not understand how [they were registered] at the Registro Público. There is a hidden hand in all this."

Complicating the case is the fact that the notary Miller -- the only person who can explain how Vázquez signed papers in his office after she had died – passed away in 2005. Suspiciously, the other person who might be able to explain the mystery, attorney Aguilar, was killed in a car accident in April of this year.

This also came as a shock to Linares, who was told that Aguilar was present in the Public Registry in Colón this past November to sign the transfer papers, despite the fact that she was dead.

The director of the Registro Público, Alvaro Visuetti, does not believe in ghosts showing up at public offices. So he has fired Hoyos and announced that he will submit a complaint to police for possible criminal prosecution. Two other employees are also under investigation.

In a report on the matter, Visuetti said numerous errors were made, including the processing of the application in just two hours, which anyway should have entailed a thorough investigation to ensure that all the signatures were valid. Hoyos reportedly said there was no internal or external pressure applied to give the transfer preferential treatment.

Hoyos also failed to explain how a person who had been dead for several months managed to sign a receipt at the office.

In light of the information that has emerged about the case, the Registro Público has frozen the property until the matter is resolved.

As for Linares, he finds himself at the beginning of what will probably be a long road of legal nightmares as he tries to recover what he believes is rightfully his.

He hopes the nightmare doesn´t include any more dead people rising from the grave.