AIFOS´s owners to be investigated

The Instruction Court of Málaga number 10 investigate the claim lodged by one Aifos’ creditor, who managed to gather enough supporting paper work to proof that the owners, Jesús Ruiz Casado and his wife, Teresa Maldonado Taillefer had carried out supposedly several transactions between 2008 and 2009 by which they ceded their properties, acquired shares from other companies and sold active to other companies, all of them under Aifos’ tutelage. In this way, according to the claim which SUR newspaper managed to see, Aifos would have been reducing its net’s worth intentionally, foreseeing its inevitable insolvency declaration. In fact, several claims of creditors were lodged demanding its insolvency proceedings to be approved, although it was the company itself which claimed the volunteer insolvency proceedings to be approved and which was given the go-ahead by the Mercantile Court number 1 in July 2009. The Court has already been informed about these facts, which are being investigated by criminal means, by means of a writ where the demanding party is asking the Judge in charge of the creditors meeting to “dismiss immediately” the proceedings administrators. According to the claim, one of Aifos's associates sold several properties to other company with no permission granted from the creditors meeting administrators , this associated company is not even listed in the Creditors list, although it seems that the Aifos administers it. In the petition for the dismissal of the creditors meeting administrators, the demanding creditor is also demanding that the Judge asks them to "reimburse the totality of the properties that were illegally transferred to the detriment of all of the other creditors". Amongst the facts in the claim lodged, six conveyances carried out by means of assignment in payment (dación en pago) are detailed along with sales of properties and shares, company shares acquisitions by means of unpaid promissory notes and lands released from their mortgages which in turn are levied upon some other lands owned by Aifos. All of them are well documented by means of Title Deeds with protocol number assigned by two Notary offices in the capital. For this reason, the demanding party asks for Jesús Ruiz Casado and his wife to be charged with a crime of fraudulent conveyance and other crime of fraudulent conveyance once the creditors meeting was approved, also with a crime of perfidious management. This newspaper has unsuccessfully sought to obtain Aifos’s version about the reported facts. The creditors meeting involving the development company affects more than six thousand of creditors, of which in the region of one thousand are property purchasers and hundreds of suppliers, to whom Aifos offered to pay only 45% of the debt owed to them, although payments will come into effect no sooner than a decade and at the rate of six yearly settlements. So far no agreement has been reached. Matters got worse since the development company asked the Judge, last month of April, to dismiss the three creditors meeting administrators whom were judicially appointed, arguing that these three administrators were being a “serious obstacle” for the normal unfolding of the proceedings. Aifos accused the administrators of being an “impediment” to reach an fair agreement for the creditors and which guarantees the feasibility of the company. Also, Jesús Ruiz Casado and several managers of the corporation are accussed in the so-called “Malaya case” for carrying out, allegedly, payments of nearly five millions of Euros to the former Urban development officer, Juan Antonio Roca, in exchange of urban favors. The sentence regarding this case will be issued in September.