Alejandro Marx' nightmare began in 2019, when he decided to buy an off-plan (VEFA) flat in the "L'Adresse" residential complex in Esch-sur-Alzette. At the time, he was told his unit would be ready for handover in the autumn of 2021. There had been no reason for him to be suspicious.
The Luxembourg property market was still booming, and flats were selling like hot cakes.
Months went by, and the thirty-something suspected nothing. The construction site on Rue de l'Alzette appeared to be progressing, and the developer in charge, GC Promotions, gave no cause for concern.
Even so, delays began to pile up, and owners started to worry. The company, however, had an answer for everything, whether the pandemic, the war in Ukraine or bad weather. The reasons given for the delays, Marx recalls, all seemed plausible enough.
It was only later that he began to question the developer's account. And with good reason: Marx was working abroad at the time. He realised there was a real problem in late 2023, he said.
The façade still wasn't finished, yet the scaffolding had been taken down. He eventually learned that the site had been shut down by the Labour and Mines Inspectorate (ITM).
He had been completely blindsided, and he was not alone. The complex was set to house 21 flats, involving 21 owners. By this point, the project was already running more than two years behind schedule.
There were more shocks in store for Marx. When he tried to reach GC Promotions for an explanation, the company did not respond. All his attempts at contact, whether by email, phone or registered letter, came to nothing.
Then, suspicions began to grow. Construction seemed to have moved forward on some fronts, while major work remained to be done elsewhere. Some flats, Marx pointed out, were nearly finished, whereas his own was still a long way from completion.
The co-owners rightly began to ask how the funds transferred to the developer since the start of construction had been used.
Marx went so far as to comb through his purchase agreement, where he came across very vague wording on when payment instalments were due.
The agreement, he explained, stipulates that payments are to be made as the work progresses. He shared the purchase agreement with RTL, and, on inspection, RTL was able to confirm his claims, specifically that under VEFA regulations, instalments are due to be paid following the completion of the work.
That ambiguity is also flagged in a forthcoming independent expert report, which RTL has also reviewed. The report notes the lack of correlation between the payment schedule in the sales contracts and the descriptive notes, and concludes that the trigger for payment instalments ("during construction") tends to encourage the invoicing of advance payments.
The document is dated April 2026, nearly seven years after the sales contract was signed. The same report indicates that the building's completion rate is lower than the billing rate, meaning the amount of money collected by GC Promotions for the project.
"Where is our money?", asks Marx, who suspects "massive fraud". And that is before even touching on the damage and defects identified on the site. From thermal insulation exposed to the elements to cracked windows and slabs, extensive remedial work will be required.
Marx and his fellow co-owners recently managed to have the court-ordered reorganisation of GC Promotions overturned. In practical terms, that means the company is going bankrupt, but, crucially, it also allows the co-owners to trigger their completion guarantee.
The hope now is to restart construction as soon as possible. Unfortunately, their ordeal is far from over, since GC Promotions' bankruptcy in effect makes the co-owners the project developers.
To start, the co-owners will have to ensure the site is monitored, secured and protected from the elements. It is "yet another blow", says Mr Clément Scuvée, Marx's lawyer, for co-owners who have already been badly wronged.
Above all, it is a task best left to a professional. In this case, the company Managea has been chosen to handle those responsibilities, with the costs borne by the co-owners, costs that keep on mounting.
Beyond the challenges of running an unfinished building, the co-owners are also very likely to have to shoulder considerable additional expenses. A fact little known to buyers in Luxembourg is that overbillings are not covered by the completion guarantee.
According to GC Promotions, Scuvée explained, the project's completion rate stands at 91.5%. For his client, and based on the expert report, it is only 54%. This highlights the alleged discrepancy between what was billed and what was actually built.
In Marx's case, the financial loss is estimated at more than €45,000. Scuvée confirms that a formal claim has been filed with the courts. That figure covers both the overbilling and the late-payment penalties owed to his client.
These figures, he added, will likely be revised, since the report is being contested by GC Promotions. On top of that come legal costs, which, in Marx' case, amount to just over €20,000
Asked whether the co-owners stand a chance of recovering their money, Scuvée does not hesitate long. "Unfortunately, they will likely never see a penny of that money", he said, because the company is a limited liability company (Sàrl), which limits its liability to the amount of its share capital.
Should the case's liquidator find sufficient assets to repay creditors, the State and the company's employees would be at the front of the queue. The buyers, Scuvée notes, would be left with the scraps.
A glimmer of hope nevertheless remains for the thirty-something, who has filed a criminal complaint. The aim, he explained, is to establish the criminal liability of the individuals hiding behind GC Promotions, given that the company itself is bankrupt and unable to meet any potential financial obligations.
The investigation is under way, and the judge will have to determine who is responsible for the overbilling and the alleged fraudulent bankruptcy, assuming a fraudulent bankruptcy did in fact take place.
But these steps take time, sometimes several years. For the moment, the priority is to move on with the construction of a residence that has been left abandoned for months.
According to RTL's information, work has recently resumed in Esch, with one clear aim: to complete the project by the end of 2027, six years after the date originally announced by GC Promotions.
For Marx, a new fight now begins, since he has taken the initiative of submitting a petition to the Chamber of Deputies. The aim of the petition is a clear one: to protect VEFA buyers.
The thirty-year-old is proposing in particular that legislation be brought in requiring property developers to use an approved expert to check, at each stage of construction, the progress of the work and to authorise the payment of the instalments due.
Many would place the start of the problem just after the rise in interest rates in 2023. But Mr Scuvée says he was already seeing similar cases in 2021.
At the time, he had been representing troubled companies, before switching, little by little, to the side of the buyers. The lawyer does not mince his words when it comes to the VEFA law.
The law, he said, was poorly drafted, and that much was obvious. It had worked for 30 years because the property market had been booming. Companies had been turning a profit without setting reserves aside, and when the market had abruptly slowed, those without reserves had immediately run into trouble.
"Reform is necessary", Scuvée said, adding that this comes even as the government is working on a reform of its own, though nothing is known about it at this stage.
For the time being, Luxembourg law allows companies in trouble to obtain up to 12 months of reprieve before having to declare bankruptcy. This is done through the status of judicial reorganisation, brought in by the law of 7 August 2023.
That law, Scuvée believes, is "easy to misuse", and he cites the case between his client and GC Promotions as an example.
The company, he explained, had filed a request for an extension of the suspension on the sly. The judge, in his account, does not need a document attesting to the agreement of the co-owners to grant the suspension.
In the absence of any contradictor, it is granted. According to Luxembourg Business Registers, four extensions were granted to GC Promotions between February and December 2025, delaying the activation of the completion guarantee by at least eight months for the co-owners.
An imperfect mechanism which, in Scuvée's view, also needs to be reformed. He said he found it hard to understand that the guarantor, whether an insurance company or a bank, could offer sufficient guarantees to cover, in theory, the entire construction cost of the building (from 0 to 100%), but ultimately only paid a tiny part of the cost, which in the end had to be borne by the buyer.
The discussions RTL had as part of this report, with several real-estate law specialists, suggest that the question of completion guarantees is relatively recent.
One source told RTL that these guarantees had never been activated before 2023, when rates suddenly rose. The wave of bankruptcies that followed laid bare the flaws in a mechanism that many buyers had considered equivalent to comprehensive insurance ("casco" cover).
