Shun Tak sues Nova City residents

A company of Shun Tak Holdings group has sued the Nova City residents who formed a provisional management committee, claiming to be the sole owner of all apartment units. The committee members called the accusations “ridiculous” and said they will challenge the lawsuit.
In a suit filed on January 12, developer Nova Taipa Urbanizações asks the Court of First Instance to declare void all the decisions made in a residents’ meeting held on November 12 and 13.
According to a copy released by the Nova City Provisional Management Committee, Nova Taipa claims that, despite being “the owner of all the units” of Nova City, the company “was not invited nor was present or represented” at the meeting.
Committee secretary Caruso Fong Ka Leong said “numerous notifications [were] sent to the developer” and the residents even published a letter in newspapers requesting a meeting.
In a press statement, the resident accused the developer of trying to delay the issuance of the owner’s title certificates and slammed it for “completely breaching integrity and business ethics”.
The residents, Nova Taipa says, are only “promising sellers of Nova City units,” having signed “reservation contracts”.
“No definite contract has been signed,” so they “are not yet owners of any unit,” the developer explains.
The Nova City Provisional Management Committee “has been meddling in the Nova City building management,” the company accuses.
Fong has a different view and claims that “a number of them [the residents] have proof of property rights”. In addition, he stressed, all residents have already paid the property price in full according to the reservation contracts.
The deputy chairman of the management committee, Huie Wing Hong, said that there is no factual basis for Nova Taipa’s lawsuit. The developer, he said, did not comply with the contracts in issuing the owner’s title certificates.
Last September, a Shun Tak spokesperson told Macau Daily Times that the horizontal property registration of all three phases of Nova City is “being processed by the Macau Government”.
“We were advised that expected completion is scheduled for end of 2010,” she added.
Huie said the committee is formed by all of Nova City’s residents and, therefore, “in legal terms the developer should have sued all of them in order to show fairness”.
The case has been passed on to a lawyer, Fong said, and the committee must take legal actions against the lawsuit “in order to safeguard the real rights and interests of the residents”.

N.L. / V.Q.