Casablanca Real Estate Scandal: Businessmen Accused in Decades-Old Property Dispute

It all started with a complaint filed by the heirs of a Moroccan to whom a Moroccan Jew had rented and then decided to transfer a house built on a 1,325 square meter plot, in the sought-after Bourgogne district. The transfer of the house was only effective after the owner’s death. The tenant had paid the initially agreed amounts to the court to become the new owner.

Years later, a man residing in France brandished a purchase deed concluded in Paris with an heir of the initial owner, according to which he had acquired half of the property that had since been divided into two separate villas, reports the Arabic-language daily Assabah. He takes the case to court to free his part of the villa. The court rules in his favor in 2007. With another sales contract, also concluded with another woman presenting herself as an heir of the initial owner, he claims and obtains the remaining half of the property.

After the death of their father, the heirs of the tenant-turned-owner discover that the documents presented to steal the property were false. A death certificate dated 1998 is among the documents. Yet the initial owner would have died in 1967. One of the sales contracts bore the stamp of a Parisian firm. Approached, the latter claimed to have no trace of this file. No document presented proved that the women presented as the heirs of the initial owner were actually so.