Olivier Gritti has reached his breaking point. "We are being held hostage by this project", he decried.
It has been nearly six years since he purchased an apartment in Dudelange under an off-plan (VEFA) contract, yet he is still nowhere near being able to move in.
He met RTL in front of the residential building on Rue de Belair – a project that was supposed to be completed sometime in 2023.
A look around and a brief tour of the construction site reveal the extent of the work that remains to be done, as well as the damage the building has sustained over the past six years.
The building's basement is partially flooded, the roof remains unfinished, and the rear façade is still a work in progress.
Then there is the damage inside Olivier’s apartment, where pigeons had taken up residence.
Traces of their presence are still visible on the walls.
"There was excrement everywhere", Olivier, a Grand-Ducal Fire and Rescue Corps (CGDIS) employee in his 40s, recounts. They were able to get in because the windows in his unit had not yet been installed.
He had paid for them, he explained, but the windows weren't installed until two years later.
This is just a glimpse of what Olivier and his fellow co-owners have had to go through.
Olivier did not hesitate to grant RTL access to his correspondence with G3i – the company in charge of the project – and its directors.
RTL also received letters from Olivier's lawyer, court rulings, and all official documents pertaining to his purchase.
Together, they reveal a project management process that can only be described as chaotic.
The issues arose within the first few months of the construction project.
"At first, we were told there were delays because the ground stabilisation work turned out to be more extensive than anticipated". recalls Olivier.
Then came the pandemic and "the consequences of the lockdown", as noted in an email sent by one of the directors to the co-owners.
It is worth noting that the construction sector was among the first to be authorised to resume operations in Luxembourg during Covid times.
As the months passed, the project made very little progress.
This alarmed the co-owners, who frequently questioned the directors of G3i, though they did not always receive answers.
Eventually, G3i entrusted the completion of the construction to the firm Bau-Orkestra.
A little over a year later, in April 2024, Bau-Orkestra halted work on the site, citing a lack of payment from G3i – or at least, that is what its director claimed in email exchanges.
At this stage, the project is already nearly a year behind schedule, yet the residential complex remains far from complete.
After months of negotiations with the development company, three co-owners decide to take legal action.
The developer was granted a one-year extension to finish the work, revising it to April 2025.
However, this court-mandated deadline was also missed. "The work had barely progressed at all", Olivier states.
In April 2026, the developer was ordered to compensate the affected owners.
Yet, even then, G3i fell behind. The daily penalties imposed by the court were not paid until the end of July 2026.
Meanwhile, construction is barely moving forward, and Olivier still has no idea when he will be able to move in. "We haven't been given any completion date", he says.
Olivier is far too familiar with this state of uncertainty by now, though he refuses to resign himself to it.
Olivier deplored that buyers have not been given a single information meeting, with emails remaining consistently unanswered, and buyers no longer receiving any updates regarding the progress of the construction.
"We are being kept completely in the dark", Olivier said.
He describes this lack of communication as "absolutely unacceptable", especially given that the residential complex should have been completed more than three years ago.
These delays have very real consequences for the lives of the affected buyers; pushed to his financial breaking point, Olivier, for instance, was forced to sell the apartment he owned in Bettembourg.
"I had taken out a bridge loan to help me manage the transition between two properties", he explains.
But the surge in interest rates forced him to sell and move into a rental property, as the residence in Dudelange was not yet complete.
He now pays over €4,000 a month, covering both his mortgage repayments and rent.
This is further complicated by the fact that he is the father of a teenager, with whom he shares custody with his ex-partner.
Living in a studio apartment to save money is therefore not an option.
"My daughter is 14; I need to be able to provide a proper environment for her", he says.
The consequences do not end there.
For Olivier, who holds a position of responsibility at CGDIS, even the smallest unforeseen expense has become a major problem.
A simple vehicle repair can be enough to push his finances over the edge.
The firefighter has even had to ask his parents for help. "At my age, that is something particularly difficult to accept", he laments.
As RTL reported on Monday, the government has not announced any aid or compensation fund for aggrieved buyers.
Furthermore, very few details are known about the upcoming VEFA framework reforms, other than the fact that its provisions will not be retroactive.
In practical terms, this means that individuals who made purchases before the reform comes into effect will not be protected by the new legal provisions.
Olivier stated that buyers, including himself, had taken every possible step to assert their rights.
He added that he had consulted lawyers, initiated legal proceedings, and even secured a judgment in the buyers' favour.
Despite this, he said, they found themselves back at square one and the promises apartments remain unfinished.
"It feels as though no one is truly in a position to get us out of this mess", Olivier said.
As seen in the account provided by Alejandro, a bankruptcy, followed by the activation of a completion guarantee, does not necessarily simplify matters, especially when overbilling has occurred.
And, at first glance, it appears that this was the case in Dudelange.
"The company G3i issued a significant number of invoices for work that was either never carried out or only partially completed", Oliver says.
He points in particular to the lift that has not been installed, the unfinished roof and the façade that has only been partially completed.
Invoices have been issued and payments made for all of this work, Olivier explained.
During our visit to Dudelange, we were able to verify Mr Gritti's claims, at least regarding the lift, roof and façade.
Olivier denounces what he describes as "extremely worrying practices" that, in his view, "raise serious legal questions".
Despite everything, he now has just one hope: that his ordeal will come to an end and he will finally be able to move into his apartment in Dudelange.
"I'm not asking for anything extraordinary, just to finally be able to move into the apartment I bought in 2020, which I'm still paying off every month and which I should have been living in for several years now", he exclaimed.
RTL contacted the three directors of G3i to seek an explanation for the delays that have accumulated at the Belair residential development site in Dudelange.
Only one of the individuals in charge agreed to speak with us about the real estate project, on the condition of anonymity.
During the telephone conversation, he insisted that he intends to see his commitments through to the end. "I will finish this build; I guarantee it", he stated.
He explained that the very slow pace of progress is due to the fact that they had to contend with "the bankruptcy of a general contractor" – a detail RTL verified via the commercial register (Bau-Orkestra S.à.r.l.).
"All the various tradespeople stopped showing up at the site", the developer stated.
Furthermore, he claims to have invested nearly €500,000 of his own money to keep the project moving forward.
"Initially, I was just an investor in this project. Now, I have to finish this residential development on my own", he told RTL.
Several consistent sources indicate that one of the three directors of G3i has reportedly left Luxembourg to settle in Portugal.
He has allegedly cut off all contact with the project's owners and fellow directors.
"My only mistake was trusting him", RTL's source confides.
Regarding the current state of the construction site, the developer confirms that progress is slow, though not for the reasons one might suspect.
He says the co-owners are now refusing to pay for "completed work" in Dudelange.
"I’m not a bank; I can’t advance money that I don’t have", he asserts. However, he understands the buyers' predicament.
He said he understood why the co-owners had lost confidence, but the project could not move forward if they refused to pay for the construction work.
On top of that, he was having to pay daily penalties that were weighing heavily on the situation each month.
Since his company had been found liable in a court ruling in April 2026, he had reportedly paid nearly €50,000 in fines to the various co-owners, with an outstanding invoice of €120,000 still to be settled.
He himself had also been harmed, he said, having lost a great deal of peace of mind and money, but he would give everything he had to finish the residential complex.
He added that the company, G3i, would not go bankrupt, and that he would not come out of the Dudelange project with a profit.
He took the opportunity to announce a new completion date of Easter 2027, and to reject the claims made by Olivier Gritti regarding alleged overbilling.
Everything that had been paid for, he insisted, had been carried out.
This article is the fourth in a series about bankruptcies affecting off-plan property purchases. The next report will be published at the end of next week on RTL Infos, RTL Today, and RTL.lu. If you are in a similar situation and would like to be contacted by our journalist, please email rtlinfos@rtl.lu.
