June 2023

Decision of the Patras Court of First Instance on the Cancellation of a Payment Order in the amount of 860,000 euros due to the unlawful validation by the Special Liquidator

The decision No. 388/2023 of the Patras Multi-Member Court of First Instance was published, by which our appeal was accepted and a payment order of 860.000,00 euros was cancelled. The court accepted that the documents produced by the bank's special liquidator for the purpose of issuing the payment order did not reveal the claim and its amount. In particular, the bank submitted, as proof of its claim, inter alia, a copy of the credit agreement with an open (mutual) account concluded between the debtor company and the bank. The above copy of the contract was certified as accurate by the special liquidator and certified by the bank's lawyer, who certified that he was certifying the official copy. 

However, as the above judgment accepted, the certification of the special liquidator had no validity, as the special liquidator has no statutory power to certify copies. According to the Code of Civil Procedure, only copies whose accuracy is certified by the competent official have the same evidential value as the original, while a lawyer has a similar power under the provisions of the Code of Lawyers. However, nothing in any of those provisions confers similar powers on the Special Liquidator of a credit institution. 

Consequently, the validation made by the Special Liquidator had no effect, and the subsequent validation by the lawyer was likewise invalid, because the lawyer was ultimately validating from a simple copy and not from a certified copy, due to the invalidity of the liquidator's validation.

As the judgment accepted: 'However, the special liquidator is not empowered by any provision of law to issue copies of the original documents held in the file of the credit institution in special liquidation. Accordingly, the aforesaid lawyer has merely certified photocopies and not legally certified photocopies of the original contracts and for this reason the word 'original' has been deleted by mechanical means and the word 'official' has been inserted in handwriting, apparently meaning, according to the lessons of common experience and logic, that a copy of the official copy which came into his temporary possession is certified, but which was in no way a legal copy of the original, since it was certified by an unauthorised person [... ]".

(for more see here)