The government of Prime Minister Pisas has bought the famous Campo Alegre open-air brothel. At the auction that took place this morning, eight million guilders was enough to call himself the owner. Pisas himself was present at the auction and was allowed by the Ministry of Finance to go up to eleven million. The money will be deposited in the Crime Fund.
Although the auction should have taken place earlier, it was postponed twice because the Public Prosecutor’s Office could not find bona fide buyers. The brothel had an asking price of 8.9 million guilders and potential buyers had to be able to provide a bank guarantee of 5 million guilders.
Drugs and Money Laundering
One of the complicating factors is a court case that goes back to 2013. Then the Court of First Instance ruled that the company Wilshire Advisors Ltd, which owned Campo Alegre, owed the Government of Curaçao fourteen million guilders in a case of expropriation. The Court found that Wilshire had purchased Campo Alegre with, among other things, drug money and money laundering. As Wilshire failed to meet its payment obligations to the Curaçao Government, there have been several attempts by the government and the judiciary to auction Campo Alegre since 2014. The proceeds from the auction would then cover Wilshire’s debt to the government.
Destination
What the new destination of the open-air brothel will be has not yet been officially announced. Pisas claims the government didn’t buy a brothel, but a resort with buildings. However, the party of Prime Minister Pisas, MFK, has never made a secret of letting the brothel return to its old function. curacao.nu
