Moroccan Expat Fights to Reclaim Marrakech Villa Sold at Auction

Mohamed Guessous is haunted by the prospect of definitively losing the villa he owns in Marrakech. It all started with the promise of sale of his apartment located in the Souissi district of Rabat, on March 5, 2010. At the time, he signed a promise of sale with a woman named "A.B." for an amount of 3,500,000 dirhams. The lady paid him a deposit of 850,000 dirhams. The deadline for the sale was set for June 1, 2010, before the deadline was extended until December 6 of the same year via an addendum to the promise of sale drawn up at the same notary’s office. But the buyer disappeared in the meantime. It was not until February 2011 that she resumed contact with the seller.

Guessous had in the meantime used the deposit received to advance funds to a real estate company in order to build a villa in a complex in Marrakech. After the prolonged delay of the lady to finalize the sale of the Rabat apartment, he found himself caught between waiting and the pressure of the company which threatened to consider the deposit as a simple deposit that he would lose if he was slow to pay the remaining balance. The seller informs the buyer via a bailiff that she had to finalize the sale within a short period of time. Otherwise, the contract would be terminated. This annoyed the buyer who sued him in court. This situation pushes the MRE to sell his apartment to another buyer, at 3 million dirhams instead of the 3.35 million, the price set in the first promise of sale.

In 2013, "A.B." sued Guessous and his wife in court. She accuses them of "fraud by the transfer of a property to the detriment of the person with whom he had concluded a contract" and of "non-performance of a contract", under Articles 540, 542 and 551 of the Penal Code. The Court of First Instance of Rabat handed down its judgment on May 20, 2014: acquittal of the MRE and his wife. It declared itself incompetent to rule on the civil claims. Dissatisfied, the buyer appealed the case to the Court of First Instance of Marrakech. On July 18, 2017, the latter sentenced Guessous to "pay the plaintiff the sum of 850,000 dirhams, each according to the share he owns in the property at the time of the conclusion of the contract, with a penalty in case of non-payment, and to bear the costs of justice".

Guessous appealed the decision, as he believes that this judgment was rendered by default and that he was not informed of the case. As for the address of his current domicile appearing in the judgment, Guessous justifies this by explaining that he "was undergoing medical treatment in Rabat during this period, and that he did not receive the summons or notification". His appeal did not prosper, the case having been registered on appeal on March 18, 2021, where he invoked the territorial incompetence of the Court of First Instance of Marrakech in a case concerning a promise of sale of a property located in Rabat. This appeal was deemed unfounded. On March 21, 2023, the court rendered a final judgment rejecting the appeal.

On December 29, 2020, his house in Marrakech was put up for auction, with an opening price set at 1,503,000 dirhams. This offer had been made at a previous session, without opposition to the initial price proposed by the expert "M.B." for the sale of the property. According to the minutes of the auction of which the site Al3omk has a copy, the property was awarded to "A.B.", present during the sale. "After consulting the judge in charge of the execution and his agreement for the sale at the price proposed during the auction, and after the expiration of the ten days provided for in Article 479 of the Code of Civil Procedure without a higher bid of one sixth, the auction was won by Mrs. ’A.B.’, who paid an amount of 646,013 dirhams into the court treasury [...] representing the difference between the amount of the debt and the costs up to 868,987 dirhams, and the auction price, as well as the judicial fees set at 3% of the price, i.e. 454,450 dirhams," the document states.

Today, Guessous questions the expertise of M.B. He accuses him of "falsifying the expertise". He "carried out the expertise on a neighboring house of his, still under construction, while the house in dispute was completed and habitable at the time of the expertise," said the MRE. He is asking the judicial authorities in Marrakech to carry out a counter-expertise and take the necessary measures in his case, in order to protect him from the consequences of the "falsification" committed by the expert, which he describes as a "serious error".