A small town hall on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula has become the centre of two separate judicial investigations, and the details are odd enough to matter to anyone who follows the country's coastal communities.
The Municipality of Nandayure, in Guanacaste province, accepted a 29.3-million-colón cash payment (roughly $64,600) for a corporation's property taxes on two lots, covering 2023 through early 2026. The payer arrived at the counter in March with bundles of mostly 10,000- and 20,000-colón notes, plus a folder of paperwork: ID copies, a sworn statement, the company's legal registration, a trust agreement, a loan contract and a promissory note.
Things unravelled quickly. Banco Nacional refused to take the deposit twice, asking for proof of where the money came from. On the second trip to the bank's Jicaral branch, the cash travelled in a municipal vehicle with no police escort or insurance. It then sat under municipal control until March 10, when agents from the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) seized it. The municipality's own accountant and cashier had warned the money shouldn't be accepted without provenance; both say Mayor Teddy Zúñiga Sánchez told them to take it anyway. He denies giving that order, arguing the municipality is a tax collector, not a bank. The receipt has since been annulled, so the tax debt is back on the books, and prosecutors say no municipal employees are currently under investigation.
Then, on November 4, OIJ agents raided the same town hall in an unrelated case and detained two officials. One, an inspector, allegedly used WhatsApp to demand 4 million colónes (about $8,800) from a resident to speed up a land concession, and offered insider tips on other lots. The would-be buyer hadn't realised the property was a concession inside the maritime zone. Officials suspect others may be involved.
That second case is the one travellers and coastal property hunters should pay attention to. Under Costa Rican law, everything within 200 metres of the high-tide line is public: the first 50 metres can never be privately owned, and municipalities grant concessions on the remaining 150. That makes municipal maritime-zone offices some of the most powerful counters on the coast — and, as Nandayure shows, a place where buyers should verify status, ask for paperwork and be wary of anyone offering to "speed things up" for a fee. The municipality says concession procedures continue as normal while it cooperates with investigators. No one has been charged in either matter.
