A hotel complex in Lanzarote accumulates a debt with the Tax Agency of more than 12.6 million euros. This is according to the new list of debtors released by the Tax Agency this past Tuesday and broken down by Canarias Ahora.
The list of debtors includes more than 5,800 debtors nationwide, as of December 31, 2025. The hotel complex Sands Beach Resort SL, located on Avenida Islas Canarias in Costa Teguise (Teguise), has been at the top of the debtor lists in the Canary Islands for more than a decade, specifically since 2015.
On this occasion, it ranks as the third largest debtor in the archipelago, only behind Inversiones Las Teresitas (ITL), in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Nueva Energía 3000, in the province of Las Palmas.
Acquired by the owners of Sandos Papagayo
This resort was acquired at the beginning of the year by the group of the illegal hotel Papagayo Arena (now known as Sandos Papagayo) in Playa Blanca after several years in receivership.
The resolution of the receivership put an end to years of negotiations in the ordinary proceedings affecting the company Sands Beach Resort S.L. and involving numerous creditors, including the Tax Agency, Social Security, the Teguise City Council, and various financial institutions.
This agreement included the subrogation of the entire workforce, so the entity undertook the commitment to maintain employment for the workers.
Sands Beach's legal battle
The hotel made national headlines because its former owners, the Kokorev family, were investigated by the judiciary for acting as fronts for the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang.
The Russian businessman Vladimir Kokorev reached an agreement in May 2025 and accepted before the Audiencia de Las Palmas a sentence of two years and three months in prison and 20 million euros after confessing to having laundered 58 million undeclared euros from his businesses in Equatorial Guinea between 1999 and 2012.
This judicial connection blocked any possibility of a normal sale of the asset for years.