Punta del Este: They convicted a notary and a real estate operator for theft and fraudulent sale of an Argentinian’s land

Earlier this month Uruguayan justice convicted a notary and a real estate operator and former public official for fraud accused of fraudulently selling land on the beaches of Punta del Este, Uruguay. The victim of this usurpation was an Argentine citizen.

The investigation began two years ago, in December 2019, when the woman visited the José Ignacio spa in the department of Maldonado to work out the final details of a real estate transaction.

In this neighborhood, more precisely in the neighborhood of La Juanita -a place located in front of the beach which has recently undergone a construction process- she had inherited two lots from an uncle who died in 2015, who at the time was looking to sell. There, land prices fluctuate between $ 70,000 and $ 140,000, as reported by the newspaper The country From Uruguay.

When she went to see the land, located in República Oriental del Uruguay Street, the woman discovered that someone had installed sales signs there, which she had not ordered or consented to, and reported it.

The investigation went like this until Tengel Teodoro Ferraz Techera, a 75-year-old notary from Montevideo, who – according to the investigation carried out by investigators in operational zone II – He had sold the land in 2018 by a power of attorney drafted by himself in which the owner’s uncle, who had been deceased for three years, had handed over the properties to an Argentine citizen., that later sold the properties for at least six times less than market value.

“The clerk forged that person’s signature and sold it. But the buyer, whom we also denounce, he got a piece of land that at the time was around $ 100,000 to just $ 10,000 and then resold it for a higher profit but at an equally laughable price. “, explained in dialogue with Infobae Eduardo Sasson, the criminal lawyer who represents the owner of the usurped land in Uruguay.

After an agreement with the public prosecutor’s office of San Carlos, Ferraz Techera was considered the author of three crimes of material falsification of public documents and a crime of fraud, in a real regime of reiteration, and sentenced on February 3 to a three-year sentence, to be served on conditional probation.

The clerk, however, had not acted alone. For Justice, Ferraz Techera had carried out the maneuver with a real estate operator identified as José Francisco Pablo Gallo, a 60-year-old former mayor of the Colorado party of the Maldonado Board, sentenced to 12 months in prison on probation with conditions as the perpetrator of the crime of using a false document or certificate.

For the lawyer of the Argentine owner, the investigation should not end with the two “symbolic sentences” and it should be extended at least to the first of the purchasers, and to their respective notaries who, according to their criteria, acted in a “very striking” manner, unaware that the value of the property was much lower than its real price and by not consulting the public records of those involved in the business.

Ferraz Techera y Gallo, as reported by the site FM people, they had complaints and files for false certifications and violence, smuggling and cover-up, respectively.

“If the buyers and their notaries had carried out the checks that anti-money laundering regulations impose on them, they would have noticed that they had a file. And they bought and sold without having the title deeds or the second copies “said Sasson, who also called on the prosecutor’s office to encourage acting notaries to present documents in support of operations and investigate the actions of those same people in the region.

The lawyer also urged the justice to continue the investigation into similar maneuvers with the support of public officials. According to information published by El País, at least six other Argentinian owners have reported similar encroachments on land a short distance from the beach in the district of La Juanita. “We have been informed that these subjects are part of a network which carries out this type of operation”Sasson added.

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