The provincial law courts found a female building developer guilty of spending the deposits made by clients for an urbanización that was never built.

Instead, the judge found, she had spent it all on a luxurious lifestyle and the wedding of one of her daughters, bless her.

Consequently, 67-year-old Carmen A. A was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. She was also handed a 3,000-euro fine, as well as 426,000 euros in compensation to here victims.

Four other people stood trial with her but all were acquitted.

Carmen A. A. was the representative of the Jazmín XIII who were supposedly developing a urbanizacion in Otura, called Los Sauces de la Alhambra . Krafty Carmen signed four private contracts, knowing that she was not the owner of the land; that she didn’t have the means to build the houses, and, of course, didn’t have the building licences at the time of signing. Irrelevant trifles!

The sales-purchase documents were signed between May 2006 and May 2008 and the sums handed over varied between 64,000 and 152,000 euros.

But the money didn’t go towards putting brick upon brick but putting funds into her private current account to finance shopping sprees and her daughter’s wedding, the latter around 31,000 euros.

But there were moves to actually build the dwellings: in September 2006 the Town Hall issue the necessary building licences (remember that money had already been handed over by that time) and in February 2007 her company signed a deal with a building firm, but work ground to a halt in November of that year with only 8% of the total work completed.

Not deterred, she decided to go ahead with sales, explaining to hopeful buyers when visiting the site that the workers were simply not working that day, or she simply arranged a visit for a Saturday when nobody would expect to see work going on.

Editorial comment: She must have known that it would catch up with her…

(News: Otura, Granada, Andalucia)