Cadastral Survey a Charade

(This post is reprinted from Honduras This Week)

By Lorenzo Dee Belveal

Dear HTW: 

This letter is for the purpose of pointing up the most recent absurdity
in connection with Roatan real estate matters. 

A notification was widely circulated a few days ago (12 April, 2001)
concerning a Cadastral Survey to be undertaken shortly on island
properties. Under ordinary circumstances, such a project would be
enthusiastically welcomed, as a long-overdue effort to bring some
order and reliability to land records on that endlessly abused and
legally victimized island. 

In the present situation, however, the proposed Cadastral Survey can
only be viewed as yet one more pseudo-legal charade in a long list of
such exercises, calculated to enrich the brigade of island lawyers,
politicians, and further fleece unwitting foreign investors. 

Consider the realities: 

Problems in the Honduras real estate sector have little to do with
cadastral maps and plat surveys. On the contrary, rigging a
cadastral survey at this late date will only further confuse a situation
which has arisen from decades of inept, corrupt and mismanaged
land dealing. Merely superimposing another layer of administrative
paperwork over the present hodgepodge of confusing and conflicting
legal, illegal and clearly fraudulent procedures will accomplish nothing
in the way of legal clarification. 

The roots of the Honduras real-estate problems begin with the
thoroughly corrupted court system. Start with the totally politicized
and vastly underpaid Corte Suprema de Justicia. The claim of honest
function is a hollow pretense that nobody with even the most vestigial
level of judicial understanding will credit. Politically appointed
Supreme Court Judges, serving only a four-year term, and paid a
pittance of a salary, can't afford to be honest - even if they were so
inclined. 

In turn, all subordinate courts in Honduras are under the judicial
supervision of the Supreme Court which, as such, is responsible for
the judicial integrity of the entire legal structure. Especially The
Courts of Letters, that are charged with all property matters. 

The Roatan Court of Letters has always labored under some unique
problems, including but not limited to its geographical distance from
Tegucigalpa. As a result of this remoteness, the Roatan Court of
Letters has long functioned with little in the way of juridical
supervision. This pattern of administrative neglect has given rise to
practices in that venue especially, that amounted to nothing less than
glaring parodies on the fair administration of even the most
rudimentary justice. 

While procedural laxities and abuse of judicial procedures has long
been the rule, rather than the exception in the Roatan Court, it
reached its disgraceful nadir in 1993, with the arrival of Arnold F.
Morris. Morris was - and still is - a fugitive in flight from a 26-count
Indictment for commercial fraud and money laundering, in Florida. He
came to Honduras looking for safe haven from the FBI, the U.S.
Department of Justice and INTERPOL. 

He arrived in 1992, then quickly met and married Rita Thompson
Silvestre, a Roatan widow, and she arranged the purchase of a
(fraudulent) Honduras citizenship for her new husband. This
transaction was handled through the good offices of then-President
Rafael Leonardo Callejas, for a reported US$25,000.00 and a Cadillac
sedan. 

Morris decided to get into the real estate business on Roatan, and he
found a valuable assistant in then-Roatan Judge of Letters, Fernando
Azcona Schrenzel, the nephew of former President Jose Azcona
Hoyo. With this collaboration arranged, Arnold Morris was soon the
"behind the scenes" king of real-estate on Roatan. With the Judge of
Letters "in his pocket" he was legally untouchable. 

He and his family cohorts, operating through "Southwind Properties"
and Alpha Trust, S. A., found it no longer necessary to purchase land
they wanted to sell. They could merely steal it and have fraudulent
documents drawn up by the co-conspiring Judge of Letters, and then
re-registered as replacements for the authentic documents. This
procedure continued unabated for several years, in spite of constant
complaints to the highest levels of both local and national
government, as well as the Honduras Judiciary. 

It was only on October 15, 1997, that the Honduras Supreme Court
finally got around to firing Judge Fernando Azcona Schrenzel, for
"improper acts." Out of his job as Judge, Azcona moved to La Ceiba,
to devote his time to the development of a real-estate "Colonia." 

Although Azcona was fired 'for cause,' all of the requests for Judicial
Reviews of his fraudulently improper rulings and document forgeries
were ignored by the Supreme Court -- which has the effect of leaving
hundreds of acres of stolen land in the Morris-Silvestre group's
possession. 

Even with the removal of Azcona from the Roatan judgeship, Morris
was able to keep his courthouse connections intact, via Azcona's
successors, which is a testimonial to the flexibility of Honduras
judicial collusive arrangements. Especially when the payoffs are
deemed adequate. 

It was not until June 29, 2000, that President Carlos Flores Facusse
finally got around to revoking the fraudulently acquired Honduras
citizenship, and ordering Arrnold Morris out of the country. But even
here Morris has been able to avoid capture by a posse of Honduran
police, INTERPOL and U.S. officers who were reportedly dispatched
to capture him. 

He continues to live on Roatan. He continues to operate his "family"
real-estate businesses, and he continues to avoid the Honduras
eviction order. And he continues to hold onto the illegally obtained
properties that he managed to acquire with the co-conspiracy of his
family members and the corrupted Roatan Judge of Letters, active or
passive political collaboration by both national and local authorities. 

The crux of this story is that the proposed Cadastral Survey can't
possibly serve any purpose except as an attempt to cover up these
crimes with the hypocritical axiom that "The past is prologue", and to
set these misdeeds in cement, while confirming and continuing them
for all time to come. A Cadastral Survey will merely help hide the
wrongs and the wrong-doing. 

Justice demands redress of judicial wrongdoing. This is what Judicial
Review is all about. To remove a judge from the bench for criminal
abuse of his authority, without ordering Judicial Review of his
misdeeds infinitely compounds the judicial sins, and marks the
Supreme Court as a knowing co-conspirator after the fact. 

To countenance a Cadastral Survey without first reviewing the
collateral judicial errors and reversing them is, at the very least,
heinous. 

Lorenzo Dee Belveal
<ldbelveal.net> 

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