“Prepare to live in hell”: a plot of illegal tourist apartments and extortion in Barcelona is on trial

They tricked individuals and companies into renting their houses to them. But their objective was not to live in them, but to transform them into tourist apartments without a license, which they advertised on websites such as Airbnb. This is how the Prosecutor’s Office describes an illegal tourist rental plot, including extortion of some apartment owners, which began to be tried this Monday in Barcelona. “Prepare to live in hell,” was one of the threats that one of the accused made to an owner.

The Prosecutor’s Office has put ten people in the dock and is asking for sentences of between five and nine years in prison for the crimes of criminal organization, fraud, document falsification, extortion and coercion. The highest requested penalties are for the father and son considered to be leaders of the plot. The fraud would have brought them benefits of around 600,000 euros. The plot operated between 2017 and July 2020, when it was dismantled.

The lucrative activity of tourist apartments (now in the crosshairs of Barcelona City Council, which wants to close them all) has meant that they end up being the target of criminal networks. This is the case of the plot that bribed several municipal officials, a case already sentenced. Other cases, such as one revealed by elDiario.es and investigated by another court in Barcelona, ​​were even devised by economists.

The case that began to be judged this Monday in section 7 of the Barcelona Court is a network of several companies, although the mechanics of the fraud described by the Prosecutor’s Office (and that the accused deny) are quite simple. Altogether, the indictment lists 48 homes affected, the majority in the Eixample district, owned by both individuals and real estate agencies.

According to the prosecutor, the defendants presented the owners with “altered documentation” such as false payrolls and employment contracts, with the aim of “appearing financially solvent as tenants.” These were documents from inactive companies created by the defendants themselves.

Once in the apartment, adds the prosecutor, the plot in many cases paid the deposit and the first month’s rent, to immediately “carry out work in the homes without the knowledge of the owners.” The objective: to increase the number of rooms and rent them out to tourists illegally, since the homes did not have a tourist license. The apartments were then advertised on Airbnb or real estate portals such as Idealista.

“If I have to kill you, I’m going to kill you.”

The accusation highlights that the plot did not only stop at illegal tourist renting (with the consequent non-payment of rent to the owners). It also created “a climate of terror” in the owners when they went to the apartments alerted by the neighbors due to the movement of tourists in the buildings and the noise they generated.

In the apartments, the defendants would have installed security cameras, which they used to monitor whether the owners came. When they saw them, they quickly went to rebuke them, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. “They demanded that they leave the place under threats of causing them harm,” the letter details. Sometimes they even called the Mossos showing the false rental contracts to ask the police to expel the owners.

And they didn’t stay here. One of the accused, after having been arrested when the plot was dismantled, allegedly threatened one of the owners shouting “prepare to live in hell, if I have to kill you I will kill you, but you will go from there.” ”. That same afternoon, the prosecutor adds, two other defendants went to the apartment to change the lock despite the fact that days before the property had given them 10,000 euros to leave the house.

The indictment cites at least one other case of extortion to leave the rented apartment. In this case, it was the owner who directly changed the lock of the house, which caused two members of the branch to try to attack him shouting “we are going to kill you son of a bitch, if you don’t hand over the keys we will break the door.” .

One of these extortions, one of the defenses has indicated during the processing of preliminary issues, should not be part of the trial since it was already tried in another procedure. This Monday’s session was resolved with unusual speed as the parties proposed very few preliminary issues.

The defendants will testify at the end of the trial, in two weeks. Beforehand, several agents from the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Guàrdia Urbana will parade before the court, in addition to the fifty victims of the plot. At the beginning of this Monday’s session, the lawyer who represented some of them as a private prosecution has announced that he is withdrawing, so the Prosecutor’s Office will be the only accusation in the trial.