Aifos directors face more court appearances

Aifos directors face more court appearances
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By h.b. - Jul 27, 2009 - 8:36 PM
Penal moves are now being made against the real estate company

National Police guard the Aifos offices in central Málaga - EFE archive

The problems for the Aifos real estate company continue the week after they finally filed for bankruptcy protection facing an accumulated debt of 1.029 billion €.

Now the courts are looking at several actions of their directors, and the Penal Court in Málaga has reopened the oral case against the Company Chairman, Jesús Ruiz Casado and his wife, María Teresa Maldonado, who are accused of fraud for selling property which was not later built.

The prosecutor has asked for a seven year prison sentence for both husband and wife and a fine of 16,200 € for an alleged crime against consumers. The key thing now is that the penal instead of the civil court is being used, as it is considered that the owners of the company tricked their clients in a pre-meditated way.

Ruiz Casado and the manager of the company, Jenero Briales, and another two Aifos directors are also accused of bribery as part of the Malaya corruption case in Marbella, where Aifos is again accused of collecting monies from clients for houses which were not built, despite allegedly paying a 5 million € backhander to the man at the centre of the Malaya case, the Marbella real estate assessor, Juan Antonio Roca.

Aifos also signed three agreements with Marisol Yagüe when she was Mayor, which increased the buildable area and allowed the two Guadalpin Hotels.

The public ministry is also demanding that payments made by 14 potential purchasers be refunded in full, with an additional 3,000 € in each case for damage and inconvenience caused. These amounts range from 25,906 € to 117,613 €.
These off plan sales were made in 2001 and 2002 and the contracts claimed that construction had already got underway, a completely false claim. The contract gave an undertaking to make the properties available in 20 months from the start of construction and relates to developments in Rincón de la Victoria and Torrox.

El País reports that Aifos currently has 3,115 signed contracts for property it has to hand over, of which only 1,206 properties have been completed.

Aifos was at one time the third largest company in Málaga, with a turnover of more than 300 million € in 2005, but by 2008 they were showing a loss of 106 million € and the workforce had reduced from 2,210 to 610.

Over the past 11 years the company has built more than 17,000 homes in Andalucia, Murcia, the Valencia region and Cataluña.

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