The Catalan businessman Juan Henares Parada, promoter of the building that burned down in Valencia in which ten people died, has assured La Vanguardia that he was unaware of the technical conditions and materials chosen in the project of the two residential towers: “This was previously prepared by an architectural firm, I only bought the land with the project already completed. In a brief telephone conversation, the man acknowledged being “very affected personally and emotionally by what happened. My lawyers are working on the issue.”
The person who was the owner of the firm FBEX, promoter of the building that went bankrupt in 2010, has claimed to be unaware of the materials that were chosen for the construction of the two buildings, which at the time were sold at a high purchasing value. “I don’t know what the façade was made of, there were architects and engineers there, and everything was done in accordance with the permits that were previously granted.” Very nervous on the phone during the conversation, the businessman insisted that he did not want to continue talking about his connection with the building under judicial investigation, but he insisted that “everything that was done at that time was done in accordance with the law.” And not only that, the same was done in all the buildings we did at that time, which were of the highest quality.” Juan Henares highlighted that before the developer had to close the shutters due to the crisis “we had a large structure of good professionals capable of building up to sixty projects that year. And they were all built with valid permits.”
The company promoting the damaged building in Valencia, FBEX, owned by Juan Henares Parada, had planned more than 10,000 homes in Spain in 2005, in the midst of the real estate boom. Its operations were concentrated in 60 developments in Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia and the Balearic Islands. The turnover in 2007 was 158 million euros, when its bank debt exceeded 1.1 billion euros. It is suspected that the materials on the façade of the Valencia building were highly flammable and facilitated the rapid spread of a fire that, according to the first reports from the scientific police of the National Police, started with a short circuit in the automatic system for collecting and spreading the fire. awning of the house where the fire started and whose tenant was outside at that time.
The firm was under suspicion when the promoter had to testify as a witness before Judge Pablo Ruz in the case that investigated Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, the first-born son of the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, for an alleged crime of money laundering, as published by La Vanguardia in 2007. In an interview in El Mundo that same year, Juan Paradas spoke of expanding his business field to the communities of Aragón, Asturias and Cantabria, until reaching the entire national territory. And he was interested in obtaining land to build officially protected housing.
In March 2008, the firm began negotiations with 33 banks and savings banks to postpone the payment of part of its financial debt, which amounted to 1.1 billion euros in the case of its parent company. The refinancing was limited to 600 million, which is the debt linked to the purchase of final land for developments. In May 2010, he filed for bankruptcy in commercial court number 8 of Barcelona, ??with 640 million in debt, after having failed to reach an agreement with financial entities to refinance it. Legal sources indicated that the main creditors are Caixa Catalunya, Caja del Mediterráneo, Caixa Penedès and Sa Nostra, among around twenty savings banks and some banks.
The burned-out Valencia building was built in 2005, at the height of the real estate boom, by the Catalan developer FBEX, and is located in one of the most luxurious areas of Valencia, in the Campanar neighborhood. Composed of two towers, it has 143 homes and was inhabited by more than 400 residents. The apartments, at the time, cost more than 300,000 euros, according to neighbors; figure that at that time was considered very high.