A Catalan businessman sentenced in Palma for a fraud against a married couple with diamonds from Sierra Leone

PALMA, 10 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands has sentenced a 72-year-old Catalan businessman to three and a half years in prison for a scam with diamonds from Sierra Leone against a couple from Girona, who mortgaged their house to invest and ended up losing their home.

The sentence, to which Europa Press has had access, also imposes a fine of 2,700 euros on the businessman and forces him to compensate the marriage with the amount allegedly defrauded, of 400,000 euros.

The case has been tried in Palma because the notary's office in which the operation was registered was in Alcúdia, because the lender who intervened is a Majorcan promoter.

The Court has considered proven that in 2012 the man duped the marriage by presenting himself as a businessman dedicated to the sale of diamonds in Sierra Leone, "with important contacts in the country and reliable experience in this matter."

Thus, he offered them to participate in an investment with diamonds, ensuring that they would obtain a great return. Specifically, the business consisted of buying diamonds in Sierra Leone, exporting the stones to Portugal, where they would be carved, and then selling them in Antwerp (Belgium).

The sentence highlights that the businessman had already earned the trust of the couple for another previous business, in which the couple had received not all the promised return but two of the agreed returns.

However, according to the sentence, on this second occasion, in which the investment was much higher, the accused had no intention of carrying out any commercial activity.

Thus, he said he had no liquidity under the excuse that the diamonds from the first investment were blocked at customs for failure to pay some fees, and induced the couple to arrange a loan to be able to have the money they said they needed. The businessman put the couple in contact with a Majorcan who would act as a lender, and they arranged a loan mortgaging the house of which they both owned equally. They gave the defendant 400,000 euros.

The man deposited 300,000 euros in the bank account of a company of which he was a proxy, dedicated to the acquisition of farms, and appropriated the money without investing any of the amounts in the sale of diamonds. Meanwhile, the couple could not afford to pay the loan and lost the house. Assisted by the lawyer Mateo Cañellas Vic, they filed a complaint for fraud.

In the trial held in September, the man defended his innocence, ensuring that there was no deception and that the diamond business was real. He assured that they "assaulted" him in the African country and stole the diamonds after buying them.

According to his story, he was with three other people, one of them the driver, and two local "trustworthy" men, who stayed with the thieves. "I will never be able to prove it, but I think it was they who sold me," he declared at the trial. According to what he said, the assailants killed the two collaborators and their bodies were found later: "I think they agreed and it went wrong."