Spanish city ends mini-Dubai project suspecting ‘fake sheikh’ scam

Madrid: The Spanish city of Salamanca has broken off a partnership with a UK-based company that promised to turn it into a mini-Dubai amid suspicions it has fallen victim to a “fake sheikh” scam.

Carlos García Carbayo, the mayor of Salamanca, announced last week he had torn up an agreement with Peace City World to bring in €15 billion ($23 billion) of investment.

He had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the firm at an event in the British House of Lords last year, after the company promised to deliver a “smart city” with a technology park and sky lift taking tourists to and from the city’s medieval centre.

The Church of the Clerecia in the old town of Salamanca, Spain.Credit:iStock

The company organised a conference in Salamanca last month but local officials were left wondering whether the purported investors in Arab robes were legitimate.

Carbayo said the event was marked by “fanciful projects [and] people with strange clothes, looking like sheikhs”.

“The talk was of big investors who we do not know, so we are going to stop all this nonsense and take care of ourselves,” he said in an interview with Onda Cero radio station.

Most of the speakers at the Salamanca Congress spoke in general terms about cities of the future, including John Desmond Anderson, a member of the House of Lords and Viscount Waverley, who said he had no connection with the company.

The mayor had doubts about proposed plans to turn Salamanca, Spain, into a smart city.Credit:Getty

“I was asked to speak about smart cities as a concept and I sent a recording. I know a proposal has been put forward to the city authorities for a smart city, and that’s all I know,” Lord Waverley said after he sent in a video speech.

Carbayo said he first became suspicious when he realised the city hall consultant who suggested the partnership had lied on his CV about attending Salamanca’s university.

The consultant, José María Fuentes has since been fired from his €157,000-a-year post.

The company was incorporated in London in 2019 and, according to Companies House, has remained dormant ever since.

The signing of a memorandum of understanding between Peace City World and Salamanca, Spain, at a ceremony held in the Attlee Room, House of Lords, Palace of Westminster, LondonCredit:peacecity.world

John Mavrak, chairman of the company, said at the congress in Salamanca that he was talking to governments in a dozen countries across the world about building smart cities that would promote global peace.

Mavrak also claimed that his company wanted to help Ukraine rebuild its “destroyed cities”.

But several of the proposed partners of the Salamanca project, including FCC, an infrastructure giant, said they had no knowledge of the scheme when contacted by local media.

“It’s a smokescreen. Who are the investors, businessmen and sheikhs?” said Érica Polo, a Salamanca council member from the Socialist Party.

“A serious city council cannot just allow a consultant to come up with the first idea in his head because the city’s name is at stake. When we ask about specific projects and names, they don’t answer,” she told Público newspaper.

Virginia Carrera, a city councillor from the United Left party, said money had been wasted on a project that had never existed beyond a memorandum that “merely reflects future intentions and does not state anything specific”.

Fernando Castaño, Salamanca’s head of tourism, said that less than €36,000 had been spent on the project.

The House of Lords confirmed to the London Telegraph that Peace City World had held an event in the Attlee Room in June 2022.

A House of Lords spokesman said: “All organisations holding events in the Lords are screened to ensure that they are fit and proper to hold events in Parliament and that the event will not harm the reputation of the House.”

Peace City World did not reply to requests for a comment.

The Telegraph, London

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