A leading Spanish property lawyer
is defending almost a hundred Northern Ireland families in a property scam
worth six million euros. The bogus
scheme dates back to 2005/2006 and relates to a number of off-plan apartments
at the Estepona Beach and Country Club in Spain.
6 million euros swindled from investors in scam
The families from Northern
Ireland invested a total of six million euros in 350 apartments supposedly
planned for the Estepona Beach and Country Club in Spain. The project was managed by Ocean View
Properties, a British based developer who collected the deposits for the
properties in 2005/6.
Each of the investors put down a
deposit of between 60,000 and 100,000 euros after they were told that the
scheme had enormous investment potential thanks to Disneylandââ¬â¢s plans to
relocate from Paris to Estepona.
While Disneyland has purchased land in Estepona, the company has never
announced any plans for the area.
The plan never came to fruition
and neither did the planned Estepona Beach and Country Club. The investors all lost their deposits
and the contracts they had to sign and return to Ocean View Properties were
never countersigned by the developer.
Overseas property lawyer taking on class action
The families involved in the scam
have now launched a class action against Ocean View Properties and its Spanish
partner Sun Golf Desarrollos Inmobiliarios, which was in charge of marketing.
Spanish property lawyer Antonio
Flores who is representing the families also claims that the lawyers who were
recommended to Ocean Viewââ¬â¢s clients were complicit in the property fraud.
Some of the families involved
also invested in other Ocean View off-plan developments in Morocco and the
Dominican Republic, neither of which ever came to fruition.
Lawyers for overseas property legal services
