Santo Domingo.— One of the best-known and longest-running urban planning disputes in the Dominican Republic, the case of the so-called Torre de Plata, in the Los Cacicazgos sector of the National District, has just recorded a new judicial chapter.
The Second Chamber of the Justice of the Peace Court for Municipal Affairs of the National District declared the criminal action brought against Spanish citizen José Francisco Bonet Gambins and the company Adecus Business, S.A. extinguished, concluding that the proceedings far exceeded the maximum duration period provided for by the Criminal Procedure Code without the delays being attributable to the defendants.
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The Silver Tower case has been the subject of extensive journalistic coverage for more than a decade. Since 2008, the controversy pitted the Los Cacicazgos Neighborhood Association against the building’s developers, generating multiple judicial decisions, appeals, new trials, and public debates regarding the legality of the construction. At different stages of the process, courts even ordered the demolition of the structure, and the case continued to produce judicial decisions until recent years, becoming one of the most notorious urban planning files in the country.
However, the ruling issued on July 20, 2026, did not decide again on the legality or illegality of the construction.
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The court determined that the criminal prosecution could no longer continue because the State had exceeded the maximum time limit permitted by criminal procedural law to conclude the trial. After examining the chronology of the case file in detail, the judge concluded that the excessive duration of the proceedings was due to multiple procedural and institutional incidents that could not be attributed to the defendants.
Lawyer José Martínez Hoepelman, who provided the technical defense for Spanish citizen José Francisco Bonet Gambins during this stage of the process, explained that the decision constitutes a direct application of the constitutional guarantees of due process and a reasonable timeframe.
“The public discussion surrounding this case always focused on the construction. However, the ruling that has just been issued addresses a different issue: the constitutional limits of the State’s punitive power. No criminal proceeding can be extended indefinitely when the delays are not the responsibility of the citizen on trial,” he explained.
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Hoepelman recalled that his client remained linked to the proceedings for approximately sixteen years, enduring the personal and professional consequences inherent to a criminal prosecution of such long duration.
“The extinction of criminal action does not constitute a declaration of impunity or an acquittal on the merits of the charges. What the court recognizes is that the State lost the power to continue criminal prosecution by failing to meet the maximum deadline established by law,” he highlighted.
The jurist highlighted that, precisely at present, the figure of the extinction of criminal action occupies a central place in the national legal debate, due to various processes of high public interest in which the scope of the right to be tried within a reasonable time is being discussed.
“The guarantee of a reasonable timeframe protects every citizen subjected to criminal proceedings equally. It does not distinguish between simple or high-profile cases. When the State exceeds the time limits set by law and that delay is not attributable to the defendant, the legal consequence provided by our legal system is the extinction of the criminal action,” he stated.
The ruling also ordered the lifting of the legal consequences derived exclusively from the criminal proceedings and declared the civil action exercised accessorily within that jurisdiction extinguished, while reserving the actions that could correspond through other legal channels.
The decision is subject to the appeals provided for by the Code of Criminal Procedure.
