It was the investment of a lifetime.
It turned into a nightmare.
Selim (the first name has been changed for fear of “reprisals”) had bought a pavilion in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine in 1977. He had set up his business there, a small café.
In the 2000s he retired and decided to rent the 5 lots that make up his building.
Today, he owes 97,852 euros to the water supplier Veolia.
A debt due according to him and his lawyer at the squat of his building for 4 years.
In 2018, Selim decides to sell his building.
But squatters have meanwhile settled in the premises and refuse to leave the premises.
The sale becomes null and void and it's time for 4 years of proceedings to have the squatters evicted.
Read alsoSquatters leave a pensioner's 100,000 euro water bill: Véolia says it is studying "a commercial gesture"
“It seems that the occupants opened the water taps to harm the owner”
They were finally evicted on August 10, 2022. Selim found his property “in a lamentable state, accuses Xavier Bouillot, the owner's lawyer.
We have people who have occupied the property without maintaining it, with rubbish, pests, rats, insects.
An absolutely horrible state of hygiene”.
But last twist, Selim receives a formal notice from Veolia, asking him to pay the sum of 97,852 euros within 15 days, for the water consumption of the last 4 years.
The hypothesis of the Parisian lawyer "it seems that the occupants opened the water taps to harm the owner, since it was found on the statements that the bills exploded from the passage of the bailiffs".
Contacted, Veolia refuses to erase the owner's debt.
But proposes for the moment a commercial gesture and a spreading of the debt.
They also mention the possibility of debt relief if a water leak is proven.