How can a family sell land that was actually expropriated years before by the City Council? That is one of the questions raised by the trial being held before the First Section of the Provincial Court, for the alleged fraud in the sale of a plot of land on the Rambla Medular of Arrecife.
The main defendant defends that "the land exists, it is there," but the alleged victim affirms that what they sold him is not what they had shown him -which he later discovered belonged to a neighbor-, but another adjacent land that had actually been expropriated in 1990, and that is practically entirely occupied by the Rambla Medular.
One of the explanations of how this situation could have originated is in the "disaster" that was in the Arrecife City Council, as defined by the plaintiff.
On the one hand, the City Council never registered in the Land Registry the land it expropriated to build that avenue, so the plot that previously belonged to the Hernández Benasco family remained in their name. On the other hand, there are key documents in this lawsuit, relating to the expropriation file of that specific area of the Medular, that "disappeared" from the City Council.
This was pointed out this Wednesday by one of the experts who testified in the trial. In his case, in addition to appearing as an expert, he appeared as a witness, since he knew the main defendant, Carmen García, who at the time acted as the plaintiff's lawyer and was his advisor in the purchase.
"With what you tell me, it's a no-brainer, but bring me documents"
According to the expert, Francisco Alemán and his then lawyer hired him to issue an expert report, since a neighbor claimed ownership of the land that the plaintiff believed he had acquired.
"I went more than 60 times to Carmen's office," the alleged victim has said, explaining that after having commissioned that expert report, the lawyer did not give it to him. "She always told me later, later..." Until he finally called the expert personally and he told him that he had delivered his report months ago, but warning the lawyer that he did not have "enough documentation" to issue a conclusion.
"Because of the trust I have with Carmen, I told her: With what you tell me, this is the report, because this is a no-brainer. But I told her: Bring me documents. And I was waiting for two years," the expert has confirmed.
Specifically, he was asking for the expropriation file from the City Council on that area -which was within the so-called "lot 5"-, to verify if what he had been told was true, when they indicated that that land had been left out of the expropriation.
"They never gave them to me and that's why I said: I'm not going to ratify that report. It was never presented. Without that verification, I was not going to ratify myself in the report," he has declared.
He has also added that "a long time after" commissioning the expert report, they ended up going all three together to the City Council to look for that information. "With the peculiarity that we looked at all the files there were, and the 5 had disappeared. There was nothing," he has declared, also coinciding on this point with the plaintiff. In the City Council was the documentation of all the expropriation lots, except for the one that affected that plot.
"The City Council is essential in this lawsuit"
"After a while, Alemán requires me, tells me that he has finished with Carmen and that he has found more documents, so that I can finish the report," the expert has explained.
According to the plaintiff, it was when he renounced his lawyer that he saw for the first time "four documents" that Carmen García already had in her possession, and that she tried to withdraw before handing over the file. Upon seeing them, he affirms that he discovered that he had suffered "a deception", and that the plot that was sold to him is not the one that had been shown to him. And according to the plaintiff and the Prosecutor's Office, the lawyer, her partner and the sellers did it in common agreement.
In his intervention, the expert has declared that those "four documents" that Francisco Alemán gave him later were the ones he needed to finish his report. With them he concluded that "the owner" of the land that was sold to him "is the Arrecife City Council". "It's all street. It is within the expropriation," he has insisted.
In addition, he has questioned that the City Council should be present in this lawsuit, since it is "the owner of that property". "The City Council is essential in this lawsuit, because it is the one who can say if everything was expropriated, but they were not called," he has reiterated.
And he has also referred to other problems that have been dragging on for years. "Some domain files were made in that way. There is no domain file," he has pointed out.
Paying IBI for a supposedly expropriated plot
For its part, the defense maintains that the property that was sold to Francisco Alemán "exists" and that he is making "disposition" of it, having registered it in his name. They even asked him to confirm if he is paying the IBI, to which he responded affirmatively, after explaining that he has sent letters without success to the City Council to stop charging him that tax. "Ask them why," he replied.
Again, the tangle is in the lack of concordance between the Cadastre and the Land Registry, and even in discussions about the boundaries -which now also face some third neighbors-, about where each plot begins and ends and about who owns each land.
In fact, during the trial another expert has testified, in this case from the defense, who has presented conclusions totally contrary to those of the expert of the prosecution.
"A property was expropriated, but José Benasco was the owner of another different property, which is the one his heirs sold," he has maintained.
Regarding the other expert report and the documentation that it includes to conclude the opposite, he has pointed out that he "took a look" at it and that he makes "reference to it in his opinion", but he has continued to disagree.
Both witnesses testified simultaneously, in a tense interrogation that lasted for almost three hours, with constant stops to examine documents at the magistrates' table. Each time one of the experts referred to a plan, he approached the stand, along with almost all the lawyers, to indicate exactly which areas he was referring to.
Regarding which land was expropriated by the City Council, the defense expert has pointed out that it was not "topic" of his "study", and that his report "is based only on the land subject of the lawsuit".
