Tag: AEAT

Tax Authorities Seize Assets From Marina D’Or’s Owner

4 January 2017 – Expansión

The Tax Agency (Aeat), one of the largest creditors of the real estate group created around the holiday resort Marina D’Or, has decided to take action. The Ministry of Finance has approved the precautionary seizure of assets from several companies owned by the founder and owner of the Castellón complex, Jesús Ger (pictured above), amounting to €49 million.

The measure is based on the fact that the Tax Agency considers that the Castellón group performed an “asset emptying” operation of its largest company in 2010, to stop the possible collection of debt that it held by carving out its activity into several companies.

The debt originally corresponded to the company Comercializadora Mediterránea de Viviendas (Comervi), the property developer and construction company that suspended its payments in 2014 and which appears on the tax authority’s list of largest debtors. Months before the insolvency, it changed what had been its historical name, Marina D’Or-Loger, under which it had promoted and constructed the popular holiday resort.

In 2010, Ger restructured the group’s parent company and divided its activity into four companies to prevent the real estate crisis from dragging down its hotels and the tourist business at the complex next to the beach in Oropesa del Mar (Castellón).

Controversial carve-out

That operation is what has caused the Central Taxpayers Office to claim the amount owed by Comervia (€57.48 million) from two other companies owned by Ger: Gestión Cartera Castellón – which was the owner of the shares in Marina D’Or-Loger until the segregation and which assumed ownership of the hotels and other businesses – and Golf Playas Castellón – owner of the macro-urban Marina D’Or Golf project, which Wanda expressed an interest in -.

In June 2016, the Administration approved an agreement whereby Gestión Cartera and Golf Playas assumed “joint and several liability” for the debt, taking responsibility for €47.9 million and €1 million, respectively.

A few months earlier, in March, the Ministry of Finance had already notified both entities that it had seized their shares in the companies “in a provisional and precautionary way” and “100% of the full ownership and usufruct of the real estate assets, homes, apartments, parking spaces and land” registered in Castellón, Benidorm and Oropesa.

Failed appeals

The two companies and the businessman himself then filed special appeals with the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Madrid. In the three appeals, the plaintiffs contended that their fundamental rights had been violated as they were not guaranteed any right of defence or access to a hearing. The three cases were dismissed by the court.

According to the list of events included in the rulings, Aeat considers that as a result of the carve-outs and company operations of the former Marina D’Or-Loger, €327 million of net assets were removed from the company. That meant that it was left with negative equity of €140 million at the end of 2010, which was one of the factors that led to its subsequent bankruptcy. Moreover, the most recent appraisal reports from the Ministry of Finance value the properties that Comervi used to guarantee its tax debts to delay and split the payment at just €19.47 million, which is “well below the total tax debt of almost €58 million”. The properties were initially assigned a value of €96 million.

Sources at Marina D’Or indicated yesterday that they had achieved an agreement with the Tax Authorities “whereby their precautionary seizures will be rendered ineffective” and that they have not been carried out “and so they would not have any affect on the activity” of its companies.

Original story: Expansión (by A.C.A)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Pozuelo & Matadepera: The Richest Towns In Spain

21 July 2016 – Expansión

Inhabitants of the towns of Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), Matadepera (Barcelona), Boadilla del Monte, Majadahonda and Las Rozas (Madrid) declared the highest income figures, according to data from 2013 made public yesterday by the Tax Authorities (AEAT), which included Statistics about Income Tax filers in towns of more than 1,000 inhabitants for the first time. In Pozuelo de Alarcón, the average gross income amounted to €59,279 per year, whilst the average available income decreased to €42,579. In the town, 84,360 inhabitants recorded a total of 41,187 tax returns in 2013.

Second in the ranking came Matadepera, with an average gross income of €48,804 and an available income of €36,232.

Boadilla del Monte was ranked in third place, with an average gross income of €48,537 and an average available income of €353,85. Las Rozas was ranked fourth, with an average gross income of €47,148, just above Majadahona, with €46,173.

The average gross income of the more than 19 million income tax contributors amounted to €24,376 p.a. and the gross available income stood at €19,933 p.a.. Madrid and Barcelona accounted for 23 of the 25 towns with the highest incomes. Rocafort (Valencia) and Simancas (Valladolid) were the only towns to break the hegemony. Zafarraya (Granada) and Zahínos (Badajoz) were the towns with the lowest average gross income, recording €10,293 and €10,301, respectively.

The statistics contain data about gross income, income before tax, excluding tax credits and including exempt income, as well as about available income, which is gross income after tax, including social security contributions. It is worth noting that the information declared in the personal tax returns relates to all income received during the year, in other words, it includes retentions.

By autonomous region, Madrid took the lead with the highest average gross income (€31,766), ahead of Cataluña, which reported €27,540. Ranked between the two, however, were Ceuta and Melilla, with €31,152 and €29,209, respectively. This may be attributed in part to the fact that the percentage of tax contributors in Ceuta and Melilla is much lower, specifically, 32% and 31%, compared with the average of 46%. Asturias, with average gross income of €24,60, was the other autonomous region that was ranked above average (€24,602). Close behind it, although below the average, were Aragón (€24,561), the Balearic Islands (€24,241) and Cantabria (€24,159). The lowest average gross income figures were reported in Castilla-La Mancha (€21,028), Andalucía (€20,824) and Extremadura (€19,034).

Original story: Expansión (by Mercedes Serraller)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Reyal Urbis Appeals To Judge To Advance Its Payment Plan

27 March 2015 – Expansión

Negotiations / The real estate company, which has a debt of €4,000 million, has appealed against the judge’s request to change and clarify certain points of its proposed agreement.

The negotiations to enable Reyal Urbis to emerge from bankruptcy have taken an unexpected turn. The real estate company, chaired by its largest shareholder Rafael Santamaría, has decided to appeal against the request from the judge in charge of the bankruptcy process to modify various points of its proposed agreement.

The decision by the real estate company to postpone the changes requested by the judge has come as a surprise, given the very difficult situation it finds itself in. Reyal Urbis has debt amounting to €4,435 million, whilst its assets are valued at €1,345 million. Moreover, it has an equity deficit of more than €3,000 million.

In 2014, the company recorded a loss of more than €694 million. It has not made a profit for five years, due to the depreciation of its real estate assets and declining sales.

On 6 March 2015, the judge Franciso Javier Vaquer, head of the Commercial Court No. 6 in Madrid, asked the company to remedy deficiencies in the feasibility plan that it had presented a few days earlier. The proposal by Reyal Urbis included a discount of 90% for those creditors with mortgage guarantees from bilateral loans. In the case of creditors of syndicated loans, which included entities such as Santander, Sareb and Barclays, the real estate company proposes two options: one of them involves a discount of 90% and the payment of the balance using certain assets (Reyal reserved some of its portfolio, worth €260 million, for itself).

The second alternative is a discount of between 88% and 93% and a six year wait for the payment of the remainder, with a grace period of four years. In both cases, the discount to be applied “far exceeds the legal limits”, something which is not justified in the feasibility plan presented by Reyal Urbis, according to the judge.

Moreover, the judge also considers that in its business plan the real estate company does not explain how it is going to obtain the funds to pay the remainder of the debt.

These high discount rates would not apply to the Tax Authorities, another one of Reyal Urbis’s creditors, with a liability of €400 million, which the judge asks them to justify “if the bankrupt entity is willing to grant the AEAT (State Tax Administration Agency or Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria) unique, special or beneficial treatment that differs from that offered to other creditors of equal ranking (…), then Reyal should explain all of the details behind the unique, specific or preferential treatment or treat AEAT in the same way as it would treat creditors of similar loans with no option to refer to a subsequent agreement”.

The “Drag effect”

In its proposal, Reyal Urbis clings onto the bankruptcy reform law, approved last year, to obtain its exit from bankruptcy, even without the support of all of its creditors. “The company interprets that Article 121.4 of the Insolvency Act allows a vote in favour of the proposal by 75% of the creditors (by grouped liabilities) of the aforementioned syndicated loan to “drag” the remaining 25%”, they say at the company. This is something the judge rejects, since the waiver of the rights to receive (funds) should be made expressly.

The appeal raised against the judge’s request has surprised the financial creditors, which had expressed their willingness to accept significant discounts in exchange for holding onto the assets that were already provisionally awarded through the drawing of lots, and which featured as collateral in the refinancing agreements signed in previous years.

The main creditors believe that these changes requested are necessary, before they will consider submitting the possibility of accepting this plan or not to their respective boards of directors. If it fails to gain the support of the majority of the debt holders, Reyal Urbis will have to follow in the steps of its counterpart Martinsa Fadesa, which is in the middle of liquidation.

Nevertheless, the creditors have not completely given up on the process and believe that the appeal may afford Reyal extra time to present a proposal by consensus.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Ruiz and S. Arancibia)

Translation: Carmel Drake