October 2025

Decision of the Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Boeotia – Thiva Branch, Annulment of Payment Order Amounting to €900,000 Due to Lack of Written Evidence of the Assignment of the Disputed Claim

The Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Boeotia – Thiva Branch published Decision No. 27/2025, whereby it annulled a payment order of approximately €900,000, due to a procedural defect in its issuance, specifically the lack of written evidence proving the assignment of the disputed claim.

More specifically, the Court accepted the ground of objection regarding the absence of written proof required for the issuance of the contested payment order, as the respondent debt management company (Servicer), at the time the challenged payment order was issued, had not submitted all the supplementary and amending agreements relating to the contract of sale and transfer of claims concluded between the originating bank and the special purpose vehicle (SPV).

The Court ruled in particular that: “From the documents submitted as legitimizing evidence by the respondent during the issuance of the contested payment order, it appears that neither at the time of its issuance nor before this Court were the numbered contracts of amendment/supplementation to the [date omitted] contract and the numbered contract of sale and transfer of claims (together with its annex) submitted. Furthermore, not even the annex to the numbered publication in the Athens Pledge Registry (volume …), referring to the summary of the supplementary agreement to the contract of sale and transfer of claims from ‘Piraeus Bank S.A.’ to the special purpose company (Servicer), was produced—through which it could be established that the latter continued to be the special successor and lawful holder of the disputed claim at the time the contested payment order was issued. Since the content of these amending documents remains unknown to the applicants, and given that, in the Court’s assessment, such documents form part of the legitimizing evidence of the claimant’s standing, which must be submitted for the issuance of a payment order to prove succession and, consequently, active legal standing, it is not sufficiently and properly demonstrated that the foreign special purpose company […] was indeed the lawful holder of the disputed claim. As a result, the respondent’s active standing is called into question, as no other document confirms that the contractual amendments did not affect the disputed claim or that it was not subsequently reassigned.”

It is noted that the existence of the aforementioned supplementary and amending agreements to the contract of sale and transfer of claims was indicated in another document submitted by the respondent, namely in the summary of a contract assigning the management of the claims.

The Court therefore held that, in cases where supplementary agreements intervene, the Servicer must submit the entirety of such agreements when applying for a payment order, so that it is evident from their content whether the disputed claim remains with the fund at the time of the order’s issuance or has been further assigned to a third party or reassigned to the originating bank.