Morocco: Real estate projects in the tax authorities’ sights

Investigators are focusing their efforts on the cities of Casablanca and Tangier, where bank branch officials alerted them to significant financial flows in partners’ current accounts belonging to several companies. These businesses are reportedly involved in the purchase of distressed real estate projects, subject to precautionary seizures by banks because of unpaid property loans taken out by their former owners, reports Hespress.

These banking movements involving deposits and withdrawals, through checks and bills of exchange payable, aroused the suspicions of bank branch officials because of the abnormally high volume of commercial activity of these companies, which were created barely two years ago. During their investigations, ANRF inspectors discovered that small real estate projects located on the outskirts of the cities, near clearly identified popular neighborhoods, were being particularly targeted.

To read: Real estate in Morocco: Facing money laundering, the state strikes back

Investigators managed to identify the managers of these companies, discovering that most of them had never created a company or engaged in commercial activity. To avoid any contact with the banks, they acquired the real estate after its complete “regularization,” that is, after the lifting of the seizures and bank mortgages, במסגרת guarantee and assignment agreements drawn up before a notary, it is specified.

The ANRF inspectors are working, in coordination with the banks concerned, to trace the movement of the funds and uncover any possible connections between the people involved in these purchases, which were made at prices higher than those prevailing on the market.