From the Sur In English newspaper, MAY 13th to MAY 19th 2005 edition:-


The absent-foreigner swindle


Dirty money, falsified powers of attorney, a drug addict turned businessman
for the day and a public notary who was having one of his off days... this is the story of Gudula Freytag and the plot of land she bought in Estepona, and it’s a story that has been heard before on the Costa del Sol


Gudula Freytag, a German woman currently resident in Switzerland, is one of those many non-residents of Spain who have purchased property on the Costa del Sol. She acquired a 5,500-square metre plot of land in the municipality of Estepona, close to the municipal border with Marbella.

That was in 1989, and she bought the plot through two Gibraltar companies that she set up: Maculsa Ltd. and Guiddale Ltd. The land, on the beach, already had an abandoned house on it, which she had planned to demolish in order to build her own house as soon as she had decided to settle permanently in Estepona. That was going to take some years of saving.

The plot, therefore, was left as purchased for a period of 12 years, apparently abandoned but in fact under the legal ownership of Gudula Freytag. So far, so good, until June of 2001, when she finally decided to build on the spot. She still cannot understand how it could have happened. “I sent some gardeners in to clean up the land, because I now had the money saved to begin building. Then, a few hours later, the gardeners phoned me to tell me that they had been told to get off the land by staff from the Atalaya Park Hotel, which was right beside her plot. They had been informed that they were trespassing on hotel property,” she says. She naturally thought it was some kind of misunderstanding, and went to get proof of ownership in the Property Registry in Estepona. There she found the plot registered in the name of Rowasblu S.A., one of the companies that owns the Atalaya Park Hotel.

The sale

She goes on to tell the story: “My plot of land had been sold without my consent, using false documentation and without a peseta being paid to either of my two companies in Gibraltar,” she says. She reported the matter to the courts in Estepona, and it was investigated. Following much paperwork, exchange of documents - some from Britain - and witness statements, it turned out that the land had indeed been sold from under her, without her consent, of course.

On the day of the sale, apparently, a man claiming to have power of attorney for the two Gibraltar companies that were the sole owners of the property, Maculsa and Guiddale, went to a public notary in Estepona and sold the plot to the Atalaya Park Hotel for 450,180 euros, payable in eight cheques.

“The amount initially paid for the property was 75 per cent less than its real value,” she tells us. “The cheques were made out to cash, and not in the name of any individual seller or company. The public notary, José María Urbano, had not checked to ensure that the vendor had, in fact, power of attorney on behalf of the two companies in question. And worst of all, the notary did not question the vendor’s identity, which is inexplicable in view of the man’s physical appearance. I had to use a private detective to track him down, and he was a very sick drug addict working as an illegal car-park attendant in Valencia Port.” To make matters even worse, if such a thing is imaginable, one of the Atalaya Park Hotel directors says that a day after the land was supposedly purchased by the hotel, he had handed over another 450,180 euros to the vendor, without getting a receipt.

The bank that paid the eight cheques from an Atalaya Park account did not comply with a court order to reveal to whom the money was paid. Freytag’s detective was able to discover that one of these cheques was paid to a South American in Alicante, into an account set up especially to receive the cheque. As soon as the cheque had been cleared, the account was closed.

Complaint disallowed

The case has gone on for four years, and has included a formal complaint to the General Council of Judicial Power, the highest legal body in the land, about the length of time that it is taking in the courts. However this complaint was disallowed.

The judge handling the case has prohibited the Atalaya Park company from using the land, but as this company also owns the Don Miguel Hotel in Marbella, which has been declared bankrupt, the receivers have put a distraint order on the plot of land belonging to Gudula Freytag.

She would like to have the Anti-mafia Prosecutors’ Office take charge of the case, and in the mean time, has some words of advice for non-residents buying property on the Costa del Sol. Keep an eye on it, she says.