trial
Jesús Ruiz Casado and his wife face four years in prison for cheating off-plan property buyers out of more than 600,000 euros
29.06.10 - 11:08 -
In the courtroom. Aifos owner Jesús Ruiz Casado and his wife during the trial in Malaga. Álvaro Cabrera
“You sold fresh air instead of homes to honest people who gave you their life savings in good faith”. These were the words of the Public Prosecutor on Tuesday in his summing up of the case against Aifos owner, Jesús Ruiz Casado, and his wife, María Teresa Maldonado, a joint administrator in the firm. Both face prison terms of four years, accused of taking clients’ deposits for properties that were never built.
“We always intended to build and hand over the properties and if problems came up we informed clients and tried to provide a solution”. The developer is accused of cheating around thirty clients out of 626,000 euros paid towards homes that were never built. During the trial he denied siphoning off funds into personal accounts or keeping amounts that clients had paid in advance for properties in Rincón de la Victoria and Torrox.
Casado’s wife, María Teresa Maldonado, told the court that her role in the company was limited to decorating show flats to help sell new developments.
Her husband said that contracts signed between the company and clients were drawn up by his legal advisors and that he was not familiar with all the clauses.
The Aifos boss explained that their normal procedure was, first to buy the land - “always urban”, he stressed - “then we went to the town hall to present a basic project, we applied for planning permission and then cleared and prepared the plot and started to sell”.
“We have never signed a contract if there were planning problems and if any came up after that, we informed clients, and gave them their money back or offered an alternative”, he added in answer to questions from a lawyer representing a group of victims.
Ruiz Casado went on to say that it was not true that Aifos refused to guarantee the amounts handed over by clients, arguing that theirs was a solvent group. “That depended on the client; guarantees cost money and some weren’t interested”, he stressed.
According to the public prosecution the company started to market the developments in question in 2001 via advertising and offers in which they made “false statements about uncertain characteristics of the properties to be built”. Sales contracts were drawn up in August that year and clients paid the agreed amounts in “the belief” that construction work had started and that they would be able to move in in 20 months. However the defendants “had not even got the relevant planning permission from the local authorities”.
The prosecution explained that buyers had handed over amounts ranging between 25,906 and 70,433 euros each.
“This is a scandal” announced the public prosecutor at the end of the trial on Tuesday in order to sum up the behaviour of the defendants. However he did call for the Aifos bosses to be sentenced to four years in prison, rather than seven, bearing in mind the extenuating circumstances that they had compensated some of the buyers.
He added, though, that any compensation had come after clients had been put off for a long time and with the “dishonest proposition” of “take the money but drop the charges”.
Nevertheless he stressed that the fact that they had given some people their money back did not cancel out any offence because “the buyer bought properties that never existed. It was a fraud, a swindle, using properties that were a basic need for a disabled person and an ill child”, the prosecutor reminded the court, referring to the personal situation of some of the affected buyers. “From the beginning you were deceiving people in a despicable way. The courts are full of claims”, he added.
“Illicit financing”
Representing a group of the buyers, lawyer Elena Narváez said that between 2003 and 2005 Aifos developed a commercial policy that affected around 700 clients due to the firm’s failure to meet its commitments. “This is the consequence of an illicit means of financing sustained by deceit”, she concluded.
The lawyer reminded the court that the Aifos administrators had confirmed that the money handed over by the buyers had not been put towards the developments in question but had gone into the firm’s general account.
Aifos is currently in administration and faces some 900 legal claims for properties. The owner Jesús Ruiz Casado and three directors also face charges in the Malaya corruption case.
