Ecuador’s internal revenue service (SRI) has seized the largest farming estate in Ecuador: the hacienda La Clementina.

The hacienda is 11,500 hectares: two times the size of the City of Cuenca. The property belongs to Exportadora Noboa, the company owned by banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, who owes the SRI more than $100 million.

The SRI’s director, Carlos Marx Carrasco, said the seizure happened at 9 a.m. yesterday morning. A legal caretaker has been appointed to continue to manage the hacienda until an auction can occur.

La Clementina produces mainly bananas, but also has plantations of teak, lemons, coffee, and a cattle farm. Its 1,800 employees have collaborated with the seizure, and will continue to work under the SRI-appointed manager. Eight hundred officers of the law are on site, guarding the property.

“If the auction covers the full amount of the debt, including fines and interest, we’d halt our legal actions against the company,” Carrasco said, but if it doesn’t the process will continue in the courts. If the auction brings in more than the amount of the debt, the SRI will refund the difference.

“We’re trying to recover everything the Noboa Banana company owes the country.” An audit in 2005 established that the company should pay $49 million in taxes a year. The SRI has not been able to collect anything from Noboa enterprises in the eight years since the audit.

Carrasco said if the company’s directors and stock-owners want to prevent the auctioning of the corporation’s main estate, they should pay their taxes. The corporation’s principal owner is the former presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa.

In 2010, the firm Global G.A.P. called the La Clementina hacienda the biggest farm in Ecuador, and the world.

Original story