The 12 million euro mansion that heads the extensive real estate assets of Ángeles Muñoz, mayor of Marbella, was free of encumbrances last November. The councilor canceled the mortgage of 3.1 million euros that she had taken out in the Nordea Bank, based in Luxembourg, according to the information contained in the Property Registry and to which elDiario.es has had access.
The luxurious house located on the border of Marbella and Benahavís was for sale for a long time, until the news of the investigation into a drug trafficking case against her stepson and her husband – who is now deceased –, and then it disappeared from the website that announced its sale. When Lars Broberg died, in March 2023, the mansion had been closed for some time and the couple resided elsewhere in Marbella.
Ángeles Muñoz’s property has been involved in controversy since this medium reported in 2014 that it had been acquired 11 years earlier through a company based in Gibraltar, which in turn owned another company in the name of which the property is located. A new chapter has been added to this controversy this Wednesday when elDiario.es has revealed the Marbella City Council’s plans to reclassify the land on which the mansion is located, with the consequent revaluation of the property.
In 2003, the couple formed by Ángeles Muñoz and Lars Broberg bought 98% of the shares in the company Crasel Limited, located in the opaque territory of Gibraltar. That company in turn owned a company based in Spain, Crasel Panoramica SL, owner of the mansion. Muñoz owned 48% of Crasel Panorámica SL and, according to her latest asset declaration, continues to be so. This medium has asked a spokesperson for the City Council if, after her husband’s death, Muñoz has taken over the other half of the company or, if not, who the owners are, but has not received a response.
The mortgage signed in 2010 is a complex financial product. The company Crasel Panorámica SL, owned by the couple, received a loan of 3.1 million euros that year from Nordea Bank SA. At the same time, the money was invested in the bank, when life insurance associated with an investment portfolio was contracted. As collateral, Muñoz’s luxurious mansion was mortgaged for 3.1 million. The City Council has also not responded to the question of whether the cancellation of the mortgage responds to the collection of life insurance after the death of Lars Broberg.
The type of financial product that the couple resorted to at Nordea Bank SA was offered by the entity itself to reduce the value of the property for the purposes of Wealth and Inheritance Tax, which then had a tax rate that today is scarce or null.
A 12 million euro mansion
The mansion was put up for sale in 2016 on a luxury real estate website for a price of 12 million euros. In 2022, shortly after the investigation into Lars Broberg and his son for an alleged international drug trafficking plot became known, Muñoz and her husband began negotiating the sale of the house with a millionaire from Bahrain. According to the document to which elDiario.es had access, they wanted nine million euros, with two initial payments of 500,000 euros each to be deposited into an account in Luxembourg. Large international fortunes flock to this country due to its intricate system of shell companies and extraordinary tax benefits.
In the end there was no agreement with the wealthy citizen of Bahrain and residents of the area believe that no one currently lives there. Casa Rosada, in Vega del Jaque, is a mansion built partly with Carrara marble very close to the archaeological site of Cerro Colorado. It has two floors and two basements, wooden and marble floors, vaulted ceilings, panic room, paddle tennis court, library, movie room and gym. In the garden there is a large pool whose shape emulates the silhouette of Mickey Mouse’s head and in which years ago one of the couple’s children brought his jet ski and displayed it on social networks.
In addition to Casa Rosada, Broberg owned a relevant part of the Vega del Jaque area through another company (Vega del Colorado, SA), and aspired to build on the land. In 2008, the Plenary Session of the Marbella City Council voted in favor of modifying part of the borders with Benahavís and that the land in which Lars Broberg had an interest would pass to this second municipality, which is considered the developable area. The matter reached the Supreme Court, which ended up filing the case years later. The criterion of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia has recently been imposed according to which the boundaries between both municipalities must be the historical ones of 1873, so urban plans cannot modify them.
Now, the new urban plan for Marbella – still being processed – classifies these lands as urban for the first time. Until now, for Marbella they were not developable, while for Benahavís they are. The land is located next to the border that separates both municipalities: they are within the municipal area of Marbella, but it is Benahavís that provides services and collects taxes.
Marbella intends to apply to them from now on a figure that does not appear in the new Andalusian land law (LISTA) called “discontinuous urban fabric”, and include them in a “joint planning area” with Benahavís. In practice, they have been urban (and urbanized) land since the 90s; but on paper, they were not listed as such for the Marbella town council but rather as non-developable.
elDiario.es reported on Ángeles Muñoz’s large assets as a result of her husband’s prosecution for belonging to a criminal organization and money laundering from drug trafficking. Muñoz always attributed her high lifestyle to her husband’s success in business for thirty years. The National Court had found sufficient evidence to judge Lars Broberg, but his state of health led to the case against him declining. The one who will sit on the bench will be Joaquim, son of Lars’s first marriage, to whom the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office attributes leadership tasks in a subsidiary of the Swedish Mocromafia based on the Costa del Sol.
Source: www.eldiario.es
