aifos getting away with it

Hi everybody.....well i am out of it, after years of fighting in the courts to even get on the creditors list i have finally been told that i will not get a penny of my 53000 euro initial investment. It has cost me thousands of Euros to take them to court, i was represented by Lawbird lawyers, i lost my initial court case late last year, i was advised by lawbird to appeal, (An appeal is whereby the courts review ALL evidence) Oh no not in Spain, they just take another 1500 Euros sit on it for four months then i was informed by Lawbird that the Judge did not even look at anything.....My Lawyer has told me how angry he is but thats the way it goes.......... Cleary is not him that has now lost over 60000.00 Euros.

My advice to anyone in a court case or about to embark on one, please do not bother, cut your loses........ Please do not be convinced that any appeal is worth it..........I appreciate it is my experience and my opinion, but has anyone heard of a success story coming out of Spain???

 Hi Miles

Have you heard of Costaluz  Lawyers,see their advert on this Website. Also Check out  Maria's  Blog on this Forum. I believe she has has won a few Court  Property Cases in Spain already.

It  depends who you have as your lawyer in Spain. There are good and not so experienced Lawyers in this Country of ours.

 sorry posted in error

miles1 quote... but has anyone heard of a success story coming out of Spain???... unquote

They are very few and far between, especially when dealing with off plan developments...

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Miless1

So sorry to hear of your circumstance.

On what grounds did you lose your initial court case? What timescale were you exposed to once your appeal had been submitted? Did your law firm submit a complaint to the CGPJ? Have you submitted your evidence to Keith's Bank Guarantee petition?

It's ironic that the Banks that fail to adhere to existing law (Ley 57/68) become the preferential creditors in cases of this nature.... was this the case in your situation? All the more reason to make the Bank that took possession of your deposited monies accountable.

Do you have proof (or has this been requested from your original conveyancing law firm) of where your offplan deposited monies were transferred?

Has your law firm suggested that a Bank claim was not applicable in your case?

Many questions I'm afraid....

Thanks for your reply,

i lost my initial court case on the grounds of Aifos claiming that my last stage payment was received by them late......although it left my bank with more than enough time to credit my lawyers and then for him to forward it on,which he did and even Aifos admitted that the delay was due to an error that their bank made. I lost the initial case in March last year and my lawyer suggested that an appeal was the next sensible step, which i did and the conclusion was supposed to November 2011 but that did not happen, i got the resolution about a month ago.

My lawyer is discusted that the appeal pretty much did not happen because the judge did not look at any new evidence, even though Aifos always communicated with myself and offered me swaps when hippodromo was being delayed. My lawyer (Lawbird said that the ONLY next opton is to go to the Constitutional court for infraction of the fundamental rights, but he mentioned that success is very low and implies more costs.

Sorry, i do not know what you mean by  ley 57/68..........

I have no proof of where my monies ended up i am afraid and i do not know wether Lawbird would have requested that, is this something they would have done?

 Hi Miles , 

 there are sucess stories coming out of Spain however they are few and far between . In a lot of cases  lawyer acting for clients tend to make mistakes to and then the client suffers again! 

I recently read a blog by Lawbirds which said clients should stop suing developers and go after the bank who acted irresponsibly with the funds they recieved on behalf of developers it is therefore interesting that this blog is by the same law firm who advised you to sue the developer!!!!

Perhaps you need to have a straight talk with the head lawyer and see if any other options are avaliable to you on a no win no fee basis in view of the conflicting adice given by this company .

Hi Miless 1,

I'm sorry to hear that you have become the latest casualty with AIFOS.

Can you tell us if you were issued with a Bank Guarantee or an Insurance Policy to cover your deposits ?

Have Lawbirds represented you since you commenced your purchase ?

Does your purchase contract include the details of the Bank and the Account into which your deposits were paid ?

I'm sure that those of us, who have been fighting AIFOS for years, will be able to assist you if possible.

Cheers

Hi,    

On the 20th of June we received  the latest offer from AIFOS, via our lawyer.

OFFER..........It's to be 45% in 6 years, the payments will take place 10 years after the Proposal of Agreement has been approved

CHOICE.......Either accept the above or AIFOS will go into liquidation and only the "privileged creditors" will be paid.

DEADLINE ..Must reply before 1st July

ADVICE........If we do accept the above, no one can guarantee that AIFOS will ever pay up. 

IN OTHER WORDS YOU HAVE LOST ALL YOUR LIFE SAVINGS, AND OVER THE LAST 8 YEARS IT HAS COST YOU THOUSANDS OF POUNDS IN LEGAL FEES FOR THE PRIVILEGE, THANKS VERY MUCH !!!!!!!

What about the banks who financed Aifos and accepted all the off-plan deposits for the Aifos developments??

Is there no possibility of legal action against those Banks according to LEY 57/1968?

Did any Aifos buyers receive an individual Bank Guarantee for off-plan funds paid to those Banks?

Did any Bank issue a Generic Bank Guarantee for any of the Aifos developments?

45% in 6 years with no guarantee of any payment........how can they get away with that?

Kind regards

Keith

Hi Keith,

I initially thought the same as you regarding the "45% paid in six years", but how wrong I was.

If I could explain that the 45% payments, do not begin in 6 years time, but in  TEN YEARS AFTER THE AGREEMENT HAS BEEN APPROVED .....?!*@?

I don't know when this agreement will be approved, or who actually approves it ??? 

Only then on the TENTH YEAR will the first payments began, and we will receive our second payment in year ELEVEN, and so on until our final payment in the FIFTEENTH YEAR.

So, for example, if the agreement is approved in 2015, we will start getting our money back in 2025, and our final payment in 2030

It is absolutely disgraceful, bearing in mind that a lot of people paid their deposits, myself included, around 2004.

Do you think AIFOS will still be in business in 2030.......Ha, Ha, Ha.

Disgraceful??????

is that a contradiction in terms?????

this is Spain you are talking about

you know the place full of nice people having fun in the sunshine

they don't have time for such niceties, do they????

they have no independent judiciary and should never have been allowed in the EU

so what do you expect????

Regards

Norman (Spain victim) or (victim of his own stupidity expecting fair play in Spain when using a UK solicitor)

My Name is Michael can we not take Aifos to the european courts of appeal.

I can't answer that but they have no money to give to you anyway. The only way to get your money back is to take the developer's bank to court under Ley 57/68. Maria will explain it to you.

 We are preparing an action against those Banks who dealt with Aifos´money.

I am sure many other lawyers are also ready to do that work too. Case Law is now quite consolidated and strong for this action.

Go ahead! but.... please reinvest in Spain! The best is to come

Hi Maria,      

 We paid our money directly to our original Spanish lawyer who forwarded it  to AIFOS in 2004/5,  and in 2008 we were informed that our block of apartments was not going to be built.     

At this point we engaged a different lawyer.and in 2009 we took AIFOS to Court, which we "won", both sets of opposing lawyers made a written agreement in front of the judge and AIFOS agreed that they had not fulfilled the Contract which was now cancelled, and they acknowledged the debt of over 80,000 Euros, which they said they would pay within 2 months.

Obviously this did not occur,  and since my original lawyer failed to incorporate the AIFOS Banking details in my Purchase Contract, I was wondering if you could tell me, if there would have been any reason for the details of the Bank, which AIFOS used to deposit my money,  to be discussed or mentioned during the Court proceedings ? 

We look forward to your reply as we are still trying to obtain these Banking details so that we can go down the Ley 57/1968 route. 

Not really at Court proceedings for contract cancellation but of course, those details should have been provided to you by developers when you were buying ( in private contract) and therefore it was due dilgence of Lawyers to provide them to you for your safeguards and guarantee.

Hi Maria,

Thank you for your reply, and just to explain, that when we went through the process of signing the Contract etc. no one informed us of what information should have  been included, infact our Spanish Lawyer who forwarded to us the Contract never even told us about a Bank Guarantee, although he did make sure that we were aware of his Bank details so that we could forward to him all our money for the deposit and all the stage payments.      

This same Spanish Lawyer, who I might add is still practicing also failed to inform us of several conditions in the contract which should have allowed us to recover our money ie.......

a) That in the event of not obtaining the licence of work within 6 months of the signing of this contract, the purchaser will be able to opt for the termination of the contract and reimbursements of all money.  AIFOS never obtained a work licence.

b) That in the case of requiring a bank guarantee for the monies paid will be obligated to provide it once the licence of work is obtained, the cost of this being with the purchaser.   I thought the developer should have provided this freely without conditions.

c) The completion of the building work is fixed at approximately within 20 months.      The apartment was never built.

d) In the case that the termination of this contract is urged by the causes foreseen in Article 3 of the Law 57/68 of the 27th July, the quantities received, will be returned to the purchaser as well as his corresponding legal interests.     Again it was never built.

Kind regards

Maria, do the Bar Association have the power to enforce lawyers to declare Banking information if this detail was not made available within the original purchase contract? And if not, is there any way to force the conveyancing lawyer to declare this information in court?