This Thursday, November 21, the mayor of Cantoria, Purificación Sánchez, the councilor for Urban Planning Ramón López and the owner of the construction company Fincas Cazorla SL, responsible for the construction of 15 homes located in the neighborhood of Los García, in the municipality of Cantoria, testified as defendants in Court No. 2 of Huércal Overa.
The hearing, scheduled for 10:50 a.m., also included the testimony of City Hall officials as witnesses, including the municipal secretary and a technician, who at the end of their statements, also ended up as «investigated», according to what La Comarca Noticias has been able to learn through judicial sources.
In July, this newspaper reported the filing of a criminal complaint by councillors of the Popular Party, in which they informed the courts in writing of the existence of “15 houses that were built on non-urbanisable land, without any municipal licence to cover the aforementioned buildings, and which were not authorisable. Despite this, the defendants, instead of complying with the ruling of the Provincial Court of Almería and the Criminal Court of Almería (in execution of the ruling), which implies the demolition of the same, allegedly hatched a plan to legalise said houses, ignoring both rulings, and thereby managing to obtain the corresponding Assimilated Out of Order (AFO) files, so that they could be registered in the Property Registry of Huércal-Overa and subsequently sold to third parties in good faith, almost all of them European citizens, allegedly defrauded, as finally occurred.”
According to the document to which La Comarca Noticias has had access, there are at least three foreign families, buyers in good faith, who have been told that the charges on the houses they have purchased have been concealed; families to whom the courts are being asked to offer legal advice.
The same complaint reflects the family relationship between the Cantoria town planning councillor and the builder (brothers-in-law) and the “unscrupulous” actions of the accused, who “acted knowingly that they were committing an illegality”.
La Comarca Noticias contacted the mayor of Cantoria, Purificación Sánchez, who declined to make any statements; “this complaint is in court and out of respect for your lordship I will not make any statement,” the mayor of Cantoria assured this newspaper.