Moncofa States that €8 Million is Needed to Complete PAI Belcaire Sur

25 August 2018

Piscivall, the developer which was removed from the project, only had guarantees for €800,000. A plenary session to assess the future development of the plan will be held on September 3.

After several months of work by municipal technicians, the dissolution of the Belcaire Sur PAI (Integrated Action Plan) in Moncofa is expected to cost millions of euros, since the total amount needed to complete the development – with measures roughly 270,000 m2 and has been blocked for more than a decade – approaches eight million euros.

An extraordinary plenary session of the corporation will be held in the town hall on September 3 to assess the plan’s future. The settlement established, though it still requires final approval, a claim of 5,984,894 euros against the developer, Piscivall, in addition to another credit of 1,987,427 euros in favour of the city council, reaching a total of 7,881,321 euros.

However, the company entered bankruptcy, owns no property and only has a guarantee of 865,843 euros. So, the result for the municipality is expected to be extremely negative in regards to Moncofa, considering that only 10% of the amount may be recovered.

During the reparcelling procedure for the Belcaire Sur PAI, numerous plots of land that were owned by the City Council were jointly awarded to the Piscivall development company and, individually, to its two main partners (Alfonso López and Javier Debón). Subsequently, the two investors acquired all of the company and town hall’s properties through a procedure of the reciprocal requirement, “thus stripping the company of property even though it had only given the city council a guarantee worth 10% of the losses,” the mayor, Wenceslao Alós, lamented.

Allegations

On the other hand, it is clear that Alfonso López and Javier Debón “have not been able to prove that they have paid a single euro in development fees” that they would be liable for as owners (7,158,321.46 euros), an amount that they claim to have paid, although “no effort has been made to validate the claim,” said Alós. That quantity apparently cannot be claimed because the developer did not make any payments. However, the matter is not finished, since Piscivall, which does not have a corporate relationship with both companies, sold credits it may have with the town hall to a new firm, SolMoncofa, constituted by the two investors.

“It has not been possible to prove any crime, but the socialist government’s management caused us to lose the land in return for a ridiculous guarantee and left the municipality a problem which will cost millions,” he added.

Original Story: El Periódico Mediterráneo – Miguel A. Sánchez

Translation: Richard Turner