Sareb’s Puts Sanahuja Family’s Land up for Auction to Recover the €13M Debt it Owes

20 April 2018 – Eje Prime

A new setback for the Sanahuja family. The Company for the Management of Assets proceeding from the Restructuring of the Banking System (Sareb) has decided to foreclose six plots of land in Madrid owned by the Catalan family by means of a judicial auction with the aim of recovering the €13 million owed to it by the clan.

Five of the plots are located in Vicálvaro and the other one is in Getafe. For the latter, Sareb has set a starting price of €12.7 million, whilst for the plots in Vicálvaro, the bad bank is asking for between €2.5 million and €5.7 million, depending on the plot for sale, according to El Confidencial.

The Sanahuja family were the kings of the Spanish property sector during the era of the real estate bubble, above all, after climbing to the Presidency of Metrovacesa, the listed property developer of which they became the majority shareholders. Afterwards, Román Sanahuja (pictured above), the patriarch of the family, led the company to bankruptcy.

Now, the clan has accumulated a debt of €44 million with the Tax Authorities, according to the most recent list of large debtors published by the public ministry led by Cristóbal Montoro.

The assets auctioned are owned by the companies Parque Residencial Vicálvaro and Sanahuja Escofet Inmobiliaria, both of which are, in turn, owned by Román Sanahuja, his wife, Ana María Escofet Brado, and their two sons, Juan Manuel and Javier.

Similarly, the string of bad news has not stopped for the family in recent times. A few months ago, Javier Sanahuja was evicted from the home that he lived in in the exclusive Barcelona neighbourhood of Sarrià. In Madrid, the patriarch of the clan, Ramón, founder of Sacresa, the seed of the Sanahuja family’s real estate empire, lost the Saldaña Palace, located on Calle Ortega y Gasset. Oddly enough, that prime property was purchased by the Catalan businessman from Juan Antonio Roca, one of the brains behind the Malaya corruption case.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake