Squatting racket crackdown
Homes have been ‘occupied’ and then rented out by criminals
A NEW instruction from the attorney general about how to tackle squatting is already getting results, according to the National Police.
Since the new protocol was issued to the security forces, officers have arrested 16 people for breaking and entering and prevented more than 50 attempted occupations just in Alicante city, revealed a spokesman for the force.
He also claimed they are working in the same way and obtaining similar results around the rest of the province.
The spokesman explained that one of the crime problems in the deprived northern area of Alicante city is that ‘certain families with long criminal histories’ have been illegally occupying empty homes in order to sell them, rent them out to vulnerable people or grow marijuana inside.
Officers have arrested two 29-year-old Spaniards who had occupied and tried to sell the home of a soldier who was posted away from Alicante.
Four Spanish people, aged between 19 and 43, were arrested for renting out illegally occupied homes.
Two families paid over €1,500 to rent one of these homes for more than seven months.
Another home was occupied after the legal tenant had to leave the country due to the pandemic and returned to find someone else living there.
A 33-year-old Spaniard was arrested for allegedly breaking into the property and renting it out to a new tenant for €3,000 to live there indefinitely.
All these investigations were eventually connected to a single organised gang.