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In Tempo Apartment Buyers to Lose Out on Bankruptcy of Olga Urbana

14/11/2014 – Cinco Dias

Last week, Spain’s bad bank Sareb informed it had filled a creditor’s petiton for bankruptcy aimed at Olga Urbana, the developer of one of the highest residential skyscrapers in Europe, the In Tempo, located in Benidorm. As it explained, the measure has been taken  to ‘protect interests of its own, of the possible buyers, providers and other potential creditors’. The judge agreed to run the trial as ‘the control of the Official Receiver will allow to ensure the best warrants for the project valuation and protection of various impacted parties’.

However, lawyers of Olga Urbana’s creditors and purchasers of dwellings inside the tower do not quite see eye to eye with the claimant’s opinion. In fact, they are pretty pessimistic about it.

‘In case of bankruptcy, my clients will be the last to receive any compensation’, says a lawyer of private buyers of one of the flats. This client and many more have been struggling to get back the paid-in amounts, allegedly guaranteed, but when they tried to do so they discovered there were no warrants. ‘We suppose the most normal process would include a bid of an investor for the In Tempo building, at a low price, and the new owner will negotiate a deduction with the home buyers’, the lawyer says.

‘The lawsuit will bring no benefit for Sareb because its priviledged position will remain blocked in the first year of the proceedings, so this step of the bad bank is incomprehensible’, points out Jose Martinez from the Gesico office which foreclosed two apartments in the skyscraper. ‘Now the creditors will have to cover all fees and expenses linked to the lawsuit. Probably, they are not earning a penny now and the sale of the assets is no small task’, he adds.

Sareb insists that only legal intervention may guarantee protection for the creditors.

Started in 2006, 200-meter tall In Tempo is practically completed today. Applying to bankrupt Olga Urbana derived from a guilty qualification (Spanish: concurso culpable) as the company was shown insolvent and had not provided balance reporting since 2009. This sort of proceedings may lead to seizure of the firm’s properties and to a future company administration ban for its directors.

 

Original article: Cinco Dias (by Alberto Ortín Ramón)

Translation: AURA REE