JEDDAH: The Court of Grievances is to make a final decision on the sale of the Al-Ajhouri plot in north Obhur on Jan. 26, Abdullah Naseef, secretary of a commission appointed by the court to look into the scam, told Arab News on Sunday.
The land has been the focus of a real estate scam for 27 years.
Fuad Al-Ajhouri had reportedly collected over SR800 million from various investors for a huge property development project in north Abhur more than quarter of a century ago. When the project turned out to be a scam, and Al-Ajhouri failed to develop the property, he was arrested and thrown into jail.
After spending more than 26 years in jails in Jeddah and Riyadh, he was released with the intervention of the National Society for Human Rights in 2008.
The victims have said they hoped that the release would speed up the return of their investments.
Several attempts were made in the past to sell the land and settle the accounts but none of them succeeded because of disagreements among the victims. However, Al-Ajhouri’s lawyer Abdul Rahman Naseef, refused to comment on the issue.
Al-Ajhouri, about 70, is one of the oldest real estate swindlers in the Kingdom.
In an interview at the time of his release from jail, Al-Ajhouri said he had been running a company that invested in foreign gold markets and that he had made enormous profits in speculative trading.
At the time, he received a letter from the minister of commerce asking him to close his office, saying that speculative trading in gold markets was risky and would cause losses to investors. He then turned to the real estate business, he said.
“I told my clients I would invest their money in real estate and industrial projects inside and outside Saudi Arabia. My clients and I began purchasing land in the Kingdom and abroad, especially in Spain and at one time, the company’s capital reached SR1.1 billion,” he said in that interview.
