N.I. FAMILIES FALL VICTIM OF SCAM

Listen to this article

They dreamed of a holiday home in Estepona, over one hundred families from Northern Ireland. Four years later, their deposits, amounting to over 6 million euros, have all disappeared.

Now, after all their efforts to recover their funds from ‘British Ocean Properties’ have been frustrated the families have all teamed up to bring a lawsuit for fraud and misappropriation relating the the development of 340 apartments at the Estepona beach and Country Club.

They families were brought together by El Mundo newspaper with over 70 of them represented at a meeting in Belfast where the Marbella lawyer, Antonio Flores, from the company lawbird.com explained that the urbanisation was being promoted by the Spanish company Sun Golf Desarrollos Inmobiliarios S.L. who had a marketing agreement with Ocean View. The agreement included responsibility for collecting advance payments from buyers in Northern Ireland for which they would be paid a commission.

Ocean View were also responsible for the recommendation of lawyers in both the UK and Spain, many of whom were said to have been complicit in the alleged scheme.

At the meeting Lawbird said that they would recommend the introduction of legal proceedings in the Estepona courts, although they had not ruled out action in the National Court. They explained that the administrator of Sun Golf, Ricardo Miranda Miret, has his headquarters in Madrid, while the Ocean View representatives are based in Britain.

Similar real estate scams involving Miranda are said th have been perpetrated in Morocco and the Dominican Republic.

Ollie Reel, one of those affected, became interested in the Estepona project in 2006 with her three brothers. They invested through an estate agent who put them in contact with Ocean View in Belfast. “We were told that Disney World was going to Estepona so we put down a deposit of 61,000 euros which now seems to have completely disappeared without a single brick being laid. We also laid out another 78,000 euros which was paid on account for a project in the Dominican Republic. That also appears to have been lost”.

Despite this, Reel says that she has been assured by Miranda that the deposits are in a safe place, something she does not believe after trying for four years to get her money back.

The victims have even requested a meeting with the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson. They said that they also regret there has been no interest in the case by the Ulster media, hence it was decided to contact the Spanish press.