PROPERTY SEARCH
The Llíber property scandal: A summary of two decades of deception
The mess made by the sale of illegal homes in Llíber and other Alicante towns is only just starting to be sorted out, but it has left a terrible human toll
by John Michael Kirby, Technical Architect and Building Engineer (above, left)
For nearly two decades, the small Spanish village of Llíber in Alicante was at the centre of one of the most extensive and damaging property frauds ever to target foreign buyers. This is the story of how hundreds of expatriates, mostly elderly couples seeking a dream retirement home in the sun, had their life savings systematically stolen in a sophisticated and calculated scheme involving corrupt officials, unscrupulous developers and complicit lawyers.
The criminal activities took place primarily between 1999 and 2005, though the legal aftermath would drag on for over 20 years. The organised network was responsible for the illegal construction and sale of hundreds of homes on rustic, non-developable land, effectively creating new, illicit urbanisations in the Llíber countryside. The private prosecution initiated by ABUSOS URBANISTICOS LLIBER NO (AULN), represented 109 families of the 298 who saw their investments and dreams defrauded.
The fraud was a well-orchestrated operation with each player fulfilling a specific role to give the scheme an air of legitimacy. At its core were three main companies: Monty’s, S.A., run by Miguel Muntaner Alomar; Construcciones Montepuchol, S.L., de facto run by Peter Antonius Schmid, a qualified architect; and Taibach, S.L., represented by Trevor John Henry Bourne. These entities actively purchased rustic land and marketed it abroad, primarily in the UK, presenting it as perfectly suitable for building dream homes.
However, the scheme could not have functioned without the deliberate and knowing complicity of key local officials who abused their power to grant a false seal of legality. Amador Signes Arabí, the municipal technical architect, was a pivotal figure. Instead of requiring proper architectural projects, he produced ‘Valued Reports’ for each building licence application and would then, in his official capacity, issue a favourable technical report based on his own document.
The licences were fraudulently granted for the “restoration of a warehouse with a habitable part and pool”, when in reality, there were no existing warehouses or ruins on the plots; the homes were built from scratch. He also directly reassured worried buyers that this was the standard procedure, actively concealing the illegal nature of the projects. This was enabled by José Mas Avellá, the then-Mayor of Llíber, who, along with other councillors, voted in favour of granting these knowingly illegal licences in the municipal plenary sessions.
A crucial element in perpetuating the fraud was the manipulation of the legal advice given to buyers. The developers steered buyers exclusively to their own favoured lawyers and advisors who were in their confidence. These lawyers, who were supposed to provide independent advice to protect the buyers’ interests, instead failed to conduct due diligence on the land’s classification, did not inform their clients of the legal impediments to construction, and in some cases, actively confirmed the ‘legality’ of the operation when questioned. This profound conflict of interest left the buyers without any independent guidance, making them entirely reliant on the false information provided by the criminal network.
The victims were overwhelmingly retired or soon-to-be-retired expats, primarily from the UK, Germany and Holland – in other words people just like you and me. They were not speculative investors, but people using their life savings to acquire a home for their retirement or as a permanent family residence.
They were blameless, placing their trust in what appeared to be a legitimate process involving licensed builders, official town hall permits and professional legal advice. Adrian Hobbs, President of the AULN (pictured, left), stated, “We only ever wanted a legal house, and after 22 years we still don’t have one. Slow justice is no justice”.The financial scale of this enterprise and the benefits reaped by the criminal network were immense. With 298 families affected, and based on the detailed evidence from 21 proven cases where individual losses ranged from approximately €200,000 to over €650,000, a conservative average loss per family would be around €350,000. This places the total estimated value of the fraud at approximately €104 million.
This figure represents the life savings of 298 families, siphoned away by the perpetrators. The sentencing document highlights the case of the municipal architect, Amador Signes, who alone accumulated over €2.5 million in bank accounts in Andorra as a result of his illicit activities. The harm, however, went far beyond the financial loss. The victims were left with homes that were illegal, uninhabitable, cut off from normal water and electricity services for years, and virtually unsellable.
A flicker of hope emerged from legislation introduced by the previous PSOE autonomic government, which created a pathway to legalisation for such properties through a process known as MIT (Minimización de Impacto Territorial) under the 2019 LOTUP law. Four years after its introduction, the victims, which represent more than half the total population of the village, had seen zero progress towards legalisation. No meeting has ever been organised to inform the victims by the currently PP-led council, despite the fact that it was the same party in power at the time of the illegal constructions taking place. In other words, they are relying on others to clear up the mess they created.
No funding request has been made from Llíber town council to the GVA despite the fact the previously PSOE led administration established a line of funding specifically for this purpose. There have been countless successful funding requests and legalisations in other municipalities but, to this day, not one in Llíber. In Riba Roja del Turia in 2023, an MIT license was issued in just one week when the council asked the then Director General of town planning to intervene. Yet in Llíber, 298 families – half the population of the village, all of them expats like you and me – were duped, terrified and then subsequently set adrift for more than two decades.
Frustrated but unwilling to be ignored, the AULN reached out to me in attempt to get the GVA to intervene directly. As a result, this potential solution was personally brought to the attention of the Llíber council in February 2023, when the then Director of Town Planning for the Valencian Community, Vicente Garcia Nebot, was taken to meet with the victims to facilitate a way forward. However, despite this high-level intervention and the existence of a legal framework, not a single one of these illegally built houses has been legalised by the PP-controlled council in the time since that visit.
This ongoing inaction means that, although the perpetrators have faced justice in the courts, their crimes have paid them well while the victims continue to live in a state of legal limbo, their homes still officially unrecognised by the very administration that was complicit in their plight.
The average age of the purchasers was 58 and, tragically, the wheels of justice turned so slowly that over the more than two decades it took for the case to come to trial, many of the original victims passed away, having been denied any form of justice or restitution in their lifetimes. Their families were left to inherit not a dream home, but a costly, illegal burden and a painful legacy of betrayal. Look out for upcoming articles on Alicante Today on this same issue, where we will see all the methods of evasion used by the guilty parties during the trial, discuss the sentencing itself and the new routes of prosecution which are now open to those victims that didn’t participate in the trial as a result of the sentencing.
John Kirby is a Technical Architect and Building Engineer (UPV), having won the award for outstanding academic achievement. He is the first foreigner to win that award and the only foreigner to ever be Municipal Technical Architect in Spain and a Judicial Property expert witness in Spain. He is Commisioner for Expatriates of the Valencian government and Ambassador for Spain and Gibraltar for Chartered Association of Building Engineers (UK).
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