by Rod Hughes
The Fraud Division of Costa Rica’s judicial prosecution organization, OIJ, is investigating what promises to be a multi-million dollar scam to the detiment of the government, the daily newspaper La Nacion revealed today.
The newspaper says that various government entities gave a foundation grants of $1.3 million, plus land valued at $1.5 million to develop an environmental project, alleging that foundation officials sold the land and skipped the country without developing anything in the proposed project.

Update July 24: Since 2002, the Comptroller General’s office has had a civil suit against the FCT foundation demanding millions of dollars, the daily La Nacion reports. In November, 2003, the courts embargoed FCT’s known in-country bank accounts. FCT closed its offices a week later.

At the center of the firestorm is a former confident of presidents, the Canadian Maurice Strong.
Strong, 77, headed the supposedly non-profit Fundacion Concejo de la Tierra (the Earth Council Foundation, or FCT in Spanish) that operated in the country between 1993 and 2003, supposedly as an environmental protector. The project was supported by presidents Rafael Angel Calderon (1990-94) and Jose Maria Figueres (1994-98), along with former Environment Minister and congressman Hernan Bravo, the newspaper says.
Together, they passed a law allowing public lands to be donated to private foundations, tax-free) and the foundation to benefit from donations of government funds (about $1.2 million at the current exchange rate) to aid in environmental projects.
Later, the project received a further donation of $85,000 from the administration of Miguel Angel Rodriguez (1998-2002). All three presidents are currently under a cloud of suspicion for unrelated actvities.
Strong, at the time, was held in high esteem as an environmental activist, having organized the so-called Rio Summit or Eco 92, a United Nations Conference in 1992. (A UN spokesman told La Nacion that it never gave permission for the Rio Summit, never recognised FCT nor named Costa Rica as its headquarters.) A year later, Calderon put a bill on the fast track in congress to allow donations to FCT to establish itself here. The bill, passed in a near record three months, was signed by Calderon and then-Environment Minister Bravo.
Two years later Bravo, by then back in congress, persuaded two governmental agencies to donate 7.7 hectares of land to FCT. A private corporation later donated adjoining land until the total equalled the area of 11 soccer fields, the paper says.
Even later, Bravo is alleged to have made a last minute change in a bill to allow the land to revert to private hands if it ceased to be used. In August, 2000, FCT sold the land.
(The newspaper also ran a sidebar alleging that Strong was once involved in a controversy surrounding to his having received a check from the Iraqi government for nearly a million dollars during the regime of Saddam Hussein.)