May 2022

Decision of the Athens Court of First Instance on the cancellation of a payment order of 125.000 Euro

Decision No. 3715/2022 of the Athens Single Judge Court of First Instance was issued, according to which a payment order of approximately EUR 125,000 was cancelled due to lack of written proof. In particular, the court accepted that the credit institution had failed to prove its claims with the formality appropriate to the procedure in question and that the payment order issued should therefore be annulled. The issuance of a payment order usually requires the production of an extract from the bank's relevant trading book which details the debts of the borrower concerned. In the present case, the bank did not provide a complete extract from its trading book. 

The typical passage from the judgment reads as follows: 'Accordingly, the third defendant has the burden of proof, since the relevant ground of appeal is based on the lack of the procedural requirements for the issuance of the contested payment order, has failed to prove that a statement of the movements on the abovementioned account was produced for the purposes of issuing the contested order, covering the period from the conclusion of the interest-bearing loan agreement in question to the closure of that account, so that the amount ordered to be paid by the opposing party is the amount of the debit balance against it. Nor does the respondent plead that there was a basis for the issuance of the impugned and consequential declaration of recognition of the original interest bearing loan agreement in the amendment deed mentioned in the impugned deed dated 11.1.2022'.

As we have stated elsewhere 'Very often, despite the fact that the above procedural agreement exists and the banks do indeed produce an extract from their trading books, the extract does not reflect the movement of the loan account from its disbursement to its termination. However, according to the case law of the courts, the extract must show all the debit entries that have taken place under the loan, otherwise the payment order is void' (for more see here).