The mayoress of Marbella and her husband negotiated the sale of their mansion for nine million euros with a buyer who had to make the first two payments, of 500,000 euros each, in a bank account located in Luxembourg, a country where large international fortunes go for its intricate system of shell companies and extraordinary tax benefits.
The negotiations date back to December 2021, as stated in the draft of the purchase contract to which elDiario.es has had access. The property remains today in the name of a company owned by Ángeles Muñoz and her late husband, Lars Gunnar Broberg, who died on March 4, although the aforementioned draft sets the delivery of the deeds for before March 21. November 2024. The Marbella councilor has refused to answer the 17 questions in a questionnaire sent to her by elDiario.es through a spokesperson for the Consistory.
The Benahavís mansion, adjacent to Marbella, is the jewel in the crown of the heritage that Muñoz has accumulated over three decades in politics. At least since 2016, the mayoress and her husband had tried to sell the house at the price of 12 million euros, according to the announcement that appeared on a website dedicated to buying and selling houses. The ad disappeared from the web after the first revelations of the drug trafficking case that affected her husband and for which her stepson, Joakim Broberg, is still being prosecuted.
In the draft agreement with Tareq MA H, the future buyer agreed to pay the nine million euros in three installments. The first payment agreed for the reservation of the property, “as a deposit or sign of the future sale”, amounted to one million euros to be paid in two installments: 500,000 at the time of signing (the draft bears the signature of 10 December 2021) and another 500,000 “no later than March 1, 2022.” Both payments would be made by transfer to “an open checking account” owned by Nordea Bank but in another entity, Banque Internationale á Luxembourg, based in the Grand Duchy. When the draft was signed, nine months had passed since the arrest of Lars Broberg for integration into a criminal organization and drug laundering. The remaining eight million would be paid by delivering a check from a Spanish bank coinciding with the delivery of the deeds and keys, before November 21, 2024.
elDiario.es has also contacted the buying party in the negotiation, Tareq MAH, a former bank executive, already retired, and a citizen of the Kingdom of Bahrain, a country considered a tax haven by the Spanish Tax Agency. Tareq MA H has not responded to the request for this medium. A second draft, also in the possession of elDiario.es, established the conditions of a rental agreement between the owners and Tareq himself: 5,000 euros per month, when similar houses in the same area are being rented at 30,000, six times more .
What would respond to the drafting of two contracts almost simultaneously, both for sale and rental? It is possible that the objective was for the citizen of Bahrain to be able to inhabit the house from the moment the rental contract is signed without possessing the deeds, the delivery of which was scheduled in the draft of the sale for before November 2024. Over time, the first million euros would be deposited in the Luxembourg account of the mayor and her husband, and the property would not change ownership until more than a year after the municipal elections.
The response of the City Council chaired by Ángeles Muñoz to the 17 questions formulated by elDiario.es regarding the alleged sale of his mansion consisted of a few lines in which it does not answer any of the questions about the alleged real estate operation and in which it repeatedly dedicates itself to insult this medium and try to insult its informative work.
The two drafts in the possession of elDiario.es are written by the lawyer Leonardo Felice Cultrera Muñoz, nephew of Ángeles Muñoz, whose signature appears in the properties of the digital document to which this medium has had access. Felice Cultrera Muñoz was accused in the case for drug trafficking and money laundering that is being followed in the Central Court of Instruction number 6 of the National Court, but the prosecutor María Dolores López Salcedo decided not to request the prosecution of him and the case was archived for he.
Leonardo Felice is the son of Felice Cultrera, an Italian citizen from the Catania region who became very popular in Marbella in the eighties. Cultrera father, ostentatious and eccentric, broke into the Marbella night dragging a long history in his country. A prominent figure in gilismo, Cultrera married Ana, one of the sisters of Mayor Ángeles Muñoz. One of the children of the couple is the lawyer Leonardo, who signs the draft reported by elDiario.es today. This medium has written to his law firm but has not received a response.
The couple resorted to a tax haven to buy the house
The Benahavís mansion has been involved in controversy since this medium revealed in 2014 how it was acquired 11 years earlier, in 2003. In 2003, the Muñoz and Broberg couple bought 98% of the shares that a company called Crasel Limited had in another, Crasel Panoramica SL, owner of the mansion. Crasel Limited was based in Gibraltar, a territory that the Spanish authorities consider a tax haven.
Ángeles Muñoz owns 49% of Crasel Panorámica SL, a total of 44,174 shares with an identical value in euros. This is the amount declared before the Senate and the Ángeles Muñoz City Council for the mansion in question. In reality, those shares are worth what half the house costs: 4.5 million, if it is sold for 9 million euros; 6 million, with the initial objective of getting rid of it for 12. It is unknown if, after Broberg’s death, Muñoz will control 100% of the company.
The ultimate recipient of the million euros, Nordea Bank SA, has an old relationship with the Muñoz-Broberg couple. Their company, Crasel Panorámica SL, received a loan of 3.1 million euros in 2010 from that bank, which today continues to have a representative office in Marbella. That money, however, did not leave the bank because the operation included the contracting of life insurance for Lars Broberg, associated with an investment portfolio. As collateral, the mansion was mortgaged, valued at 4.7 million euros for mortgage purposes, a much lower value than it is now. The mortgage expired on October 21, 2020, as recorded in the Property Registry number 4 of Marbella.
The house was never seized by the National Court despite the accusation of criminal organization and drug laundering that weighed on Lars Broberg for at least a year and a half. In September 2022, Ángeles Muñoz’s husband was prosecuted and a bail of 25 million euros was imposed on him as a precautionary measure to ensure civil liability derived from a possible conviction. However, the case stopped going against him right after because his state of health prevented him from defending himself against him and Broberg did not have to post any bail.
The advantages of Luxembourg for a female mayor
The Equity Release Victims Association (Víctimas de la Hipoteca Inversa Extranjera), a group of those affected by the aforementioned bank, stated in 2014 that the financial product contracted by Ángeles Muñoz could help him to avoid future taxes such as inheritance in Spain , when subscribing with Nordea the life insurance for her husband and co-owner of the company, Lars Broberg, who was a Swedish national. In the same way, the couple could also substantially minimize the wealth tax, by reducing the taxable base of the tax with the mortgage debt.
Ángeles Muñoz does not receive a salary as mayoress, only per diems, and has received as a deputy in Congress for eight years; six of her for her position as senator, which she continues to hold; and another eight as Andalusian parliamentarian in two different periods. She also held a position of general director with her political mentor, Javier Arenas, when he was Minister of Labor.
The address of the seller that appears in the draft coincides with the address that the mayoress offers as her “habitual address” in the income statement, a store in a shopping center in the center of Marbella, according to what was published by La Sexta and El Plural. The commercial premises are also indicated as the headquarters of several companies belonging to Joakim and Lars Broberg used to launder money from marijuana trafficking in the large-scale drug trafficking investigation that the National Court is following. In that same shopping center, Nordea Bank has its representative office, the entity where the buyer had to pay his advance for the mansion.
The draft of the rental agreement allows to know the characteristics of the Ángeles Muñoz mansion. It has two floors and two basements that house an indoor pool, sauna, gym, and cinema and billiards rooms. In total, the house has nine bathrooms. It also has an outdoor pool that occupies 61 square meters.
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