An Arab businessman who planned to invest 1.2 million euros in tourism in Santa Comba Dão revealed to Lusa that he is considering abandoning the project after allegedly being defrauded by a citizen, also accused of fraud with donations to Ukraine.
The news of an Arab investor who planned to invest more than a million euros in the municipality, after buying a farm for future rural tourism, was well received in the region.
Businessman Fares Nasser acquired Quinta Nova do Soutal, with the aim of transforming it into a tourist unit, he told the Lusa agency, through his legal representative in Portugal.
The purchase was made in 2019, after other investments, specifically in Góis, district of Coimbra.
Last year, for the project to go ahead, he looked for a caretaker, a person who would take care of the farm and do some work, not only on the property, but also in the garden, and ended up accepting Rui de Sousa’s offer, with whom never made a contract.
Subsequently, this individual asked him to live in one of the properties of the farm, with his wife and son, to which the businessman, who lives in Oman, accepted.
It is about a couple that is being investigated by the Portuguese authorities after complaints from people who accuse him of fraud with donations to help people and animals in Ukraine.
Fares Nasser says that he advanced several amounts of money, expecting in return to carry out the work and the respective acquisition of materials, but several people in the region told him that, after all, neither the work nor the material was being done. , for what he asked, he was acquiring money.
“There was a huge mismatch between what he said he was doing and what he seemed to be doing,” the businessman said.
At the same time, the businessman learned that Rui de Sousa had cut down several trees, supposedly to sell the wood, which he did without authorization and appropriated the amount of wood.
Faced with the situation, he always refused to give any explanation and the case worsened when the businessman stated that he did not have the confidence to maintain the professional relationship, Nasser said.
Rui de Sousa did not accept and, at the end of 2021/22, he refused to leave his house, claiming that he had nowhere to go.
A period of heated exchanges of messages between the businessman, the lawyer and Rui de Sousa followed, until the latter even had to leave, although he allegedly took several goods acquired by Fares Nasser in the meantime and left the house quite a wreck. without faucet. , doors, windows, furniture, among other goods.
Before that, and after the owner of the farm ordered the suspension of the water and electricity supply, he would have made illegal connections and improperly activated the contracts.
The businessman filed a complaint with the authorities and there is currently an ongoing investigation at the DIAP – Santa Comba Dão Section, for theft of goods.
The case led the businessman to consider stopping investing in Portugal, especially after seeing the “ineffectiveness of the authorities” and the difficulty that nobody did anything, even in the face of the improper occupation of the house and the theft of goods, to which Several people will have attended.
Fares Nasser plans to sell the farm for the amount he bought and is going to invest the 1.2 million euros in another region.
Lusa unsuccessfully tried to listen to Rui de Sousa, as well as the mayor of Santa Comba Dão, the municipality where the investment was to be made.
Source: Observadora
