Someone on the forum has been recently asking why it is so difficult to obtain the refund of your money despite a case being won:
It is simple. Because individual certificates of bank Guarantees were not delivered to off plan buyers, these, when claiming had to start with an action against the developer and try to obtain the refund out of developers´assets. Very difficult and very unfair. Perfect situation for Banks which enjoyed a perfect business with no risk for years.
Very difficult: If developer is bankrupted, liquidated or repossessed, ( in most of the cases pressurised by Banks), the effective enforcement of the Court decission against the developer gets an almost impossible exercise.
At the end, developers made some earnings but in depth were just the silly tool by which Banks kept high the lending levels of those years ( a necessary instrument). In many cases, same Bank officers left Bank jobs to start development companies in Spain. No casuality.
Very unfair: Becuase Law provides an automatic instrument for inmediate refund in these cases: Bank Guarantees or Insurance Policies whose existence,banks receiving deposits for off plan business had to controll, under its liability.
If the individual certificates of Bank Guarantees had been provided the refund would have been an easy, almost instantaneous exercise. But Banks did not want to put things that easy or that legal. They wanted the whole business from themselves. We all know now. Spanish Banks had lots of availability for European money which run in businesses where Consumers guarantees were not protected, against what Law required as irrenouncable rights of individual people.
In Spain, due to great Law 57/68, there is existing case law condemning Banks who issued bank Guarantee and did not provided the individual certificates to buyers. The best punishment against what it was for banks during a long decade ( both spanish and europeans) a golden an illegal business.
But... what if general Bank Guarantees do not exist? In our opinion, provision 1segundo of Law 57/68 and also professional indemnity of lawyers should cover this.We will comment more extensively about this tomorrow.
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"Sierra Nevada", Granada, Spain, by Jexweber.fotos. at flickr.com