The simple solution to the Bank Guarantee Abuse

I’ve been reflecting on all our endeavours over the years re the Bank Guarantee abuse and the wider issues, and the mammoth effort required to bring the authorities attention to the fact that so many innocent consumers have been affected by the failure of the Banks, not to mention failures of the Spanish Justice system that has all too often compromised the rule of law.

Letters have been written to MP’s, MEP’s, EU Commissioners, the supervisor of the Spanish Banking system, various Spanish and UK authorities….. I could go on indefinitely with lists of people and organisations that we have made contact with, but I'll spare you the details.

 And recently after two years of identifying to the EU Commission the need for more accurate monitoring and authority to action infringements where required, we recently learned that this is now being reviewed by the EU (according to Viviene Reding’s recent speech) which apparently requires “ a very ambitious Treaty amendment”. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-677_en.htm

(I will choose to ignore the comment "It took the United States more than 100 years until the first ten amendments started to be applied to the states by the Supreme Court.  ", for the sake of my sanity!!!!)

 Putting that thought aside, although this is a step forward as a last resort mechanism, I decided to step outside the box for a brief moment and reflect.

 And do you know what conclusion I came to?

All that is needed is the Keith Rule law of common sense that simply calls for an EXISTING LAW to be implemented in a timely and consistent manner.

Is that so ambitious!!!!!

 I rest my case.

Ads I agree and have been stressing the point in all my communications with MEP's, UK and Spanish government officials, that Ley57 1968 is a perfectly adequate law but it needs to be implemented.

My case has now been to court 9 times and has failed on each occasion on petty technicalities which have nothing to do with the basic undeniable facts which are - the bank issued a guarantee against late delivery, a property is not delivered until the LFO is issued, the LFO was issued in July 2012, the bank have been refusing to honour the guarantee since I first tried to execute it in 2006, they claim that the LFO's were in place by administrative silence. Even if the rule of administrative silence was ever for real, it has never been applicable to illegally built properties - a fact that has been ratified in Supreme court.

The bank of Spain are fully aware of what the banks are doing and refuse to regulate them.  There is a backlog of cases awaiting court hearings.  Thousands of these case do not belong in court and only require a directive from B of S to all issuing banks that execution of guarantees is mandatorey on presentation of proof of late or non delivery of properties by contracted deadlines.  It really is that simple!

By issuing guarantees and refusing to honour them, the banks are committing fraud. 

Employees of banks have a duty to report any fraud that may be occurring within the banks that employ them - this may be part of European banking code, I'm not sure but I believe it is the case in the UK. An employee who knows of such fraud within their organisation and fails to 'blow the whistle' is comitting an offence. The bank's lawyers are employees and as such are bound by that duty.

Not only are the banks lawyers aware of the fraudulent activities of their employers, they are actively taking part and supporting their employers in that action by lying on their behalf in court.

Fraud is a criminal offence, not a civil one and should be dealt with initially by the police.  I believe that a course of action we should consider is to seek out the Spanish equivalent of our SFO and report to them the actions of the banks.  I would have thought that they would have to take the allegations seriously. Any thoughts??

Anyone have any idea of the percentage figures as to who this is happening to, considering that most of these house sales are probably to a foreigner, as opposed to a Spanish person.

If....IF...the figures showed that the majority of the claims that were being ignored or dragged out for years on end were to "Others,"  and the Spanish people with house problems got to be seen much quicker, then that could cause another set of problems.

We lost over £6000 pounds on a failed development in Murcia we have moved on with our lives and decded to write it off as bad judgement ,its not worth it ruining your lives over I recommend you do the same and just move on.

Thanks for the uninformed advice Hugh - my claim against the bank is for approx 350,000 euros.

Yes that is a lot of Money 350000 but they say you should not invest what you cannot afford to lose we knew the risks and accepted the consequences and lost our money .

I read an article in the paper that nearly 800000 people  had lost there deposits and only 135 people have had any money back because there just isnt any money left its all disappeared in a black hole spent by crooked land owners,developers banks and agents no assets remain so POP even the buyers were to blame why you need to buy multiple proerties just GREED GREED GREED

People can be so gullable I know we were we just wanted a small second home

Hugh - you don't know me and you don't know what I can afford to lose.  I have been defrauded and I choose to attempt to recover my loss through the courts.  You can choose to write off your loss if you wish.  No more advice based on uninformed assumptions thanks.

I was not offering you advice personally you just jumped on my comment and took offence I was just explaining my opinion on the subject the problem is people keep hoping they will get there money back and I know they wont there is no money left its GONE

I am of the opinion that at least the Bank employees the Builders and Solicitor and Agents familys all had some money to feed there kids while this was going on at least thats something positive from all this mess.

Whilst it is relatively easy to move on from the loss of 6,000. euros it must be much, much worse when the loss is 350,000. Mike has been defrauded out of a huge amount of his money and it's quite right that he should try and recover what must be his life savings. Good luck to you Mike.

Ads is quite right in saying that new laws are not needed, just the will to implement existing ones.

I am of the opinion that at least the Bank employees the Builders and Solicitor and Agents familys all had some money to feed there kids while this was going on at least thats something positive from all this mess.

I must say i wonder if i would feel the same way about someone's kids or family if they ripped me of for over £6000.00......Wonder no more, for sure i wouldn't.

We lost over £6000 pounds on a failed development in Murcia we have moved on with our lives and decded to write it off as bad judgement ,its not worth it ruining your lives over I recommend you do the same and just move on.

Multiply that figure by 20 and then reconsider what an idiotic thing you've just said.

Yes that is a lot of Money 350000 but they say you should not invest what you cannot afford to lose we knew the risks and accepted the consequences and lost our money .

I read an article in the paper that nearly 800000 people  had lost there deposits and only 135 people have had any money back because there just isnt any money left its all disappeared in a black hole spent by crooked land owners,developers banks and agents no assets remain so POP even the buyers were to blame why you need to buy multiple proerties just GREED GREED GREED

People can be so gullable I know we were we just wanted a small second home

I lost interest after that statement...

I was not offering you advice personally you just jumped on my comment and took offence I was just explaining my opinion on the subject the problem is people keep hoping they will get there money back and I know they wont there is no money left its GONE

I am of the opinion that at least the Bank employees the Builders and Solicitor and Agents familys all had some money to feed there kids while this was going on at least thats something positive from all this mess.

Yeah, your 6 grand went all that way.

Btw, how can you explain anything in a sentence without any punctuation?

And, you did call him greedy. That is offensive.

Look everyone it dosent matter if its 1,6000,120000,350000 or 2,000,000 we all knew the risks that buying a peice of paper and a promise is risky and may not pay off,what i am saying is we shouldn,t let it ruin our lives.

It just shows the anger you are withholding within yourselves the way you have responded,just let it go we did and we feel better about it now.

We Im sure have all eaten a good meal tonight and will sleep warm and safe and should think ourselves lucky we are not suffering like the cyclone hit regions of the world.

Not angry ...just trying to be resourceful!

Anyway - I thought you'd moved on

Ha, he's moved on alright.

Oh..wait...

Hughjardon.

You are getting a bit muddled up with the opinion of  "You shouldn't invest what you cant afford to lose" that statement is only ever applied to investments in the line of stocks / shares / lottery etc, relatively smaller investments or gambles,  it has never ever been associated with buying a house,  especially one in the region of 350.000 £££'s or €€€'s.

You don't buy a house for that kind of money ever thinking this might go all wrong and I will lose it all.

Try telling Shane Filan that Baz

A foole & his money
be soone at debate
which after with sorow 
repents him to late

Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow

Try telling Shane Filan that Baz

A foole & his money
be soone at debate
which after with sorow 
repents him to late

Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow

Totally out of context to the post in question, Shane Filan went bankrupt for 18 million after only earning, give or take 8 million. And I suppose some "Extra" millions are not tucked up tightly in a secure place either.

The original poster buys a house for what they could afford at the time, one way and another everything has gone wrong because of the corrupt ways in Spain, starting with government officials right up to the banks, with thieves in the middle.

Shane Filan bought land and property with money he never had,  on the pretence it would rise in value to make double what he never owned in the first place, meanwhile buying cars, helicopters etc, instead of using this money to finance the borrowings.

If a fool and his money are easily parted...How does the fool get the money in the first place?

Please don't try and imply that the innocent consumer who is at risk of losing their life savings is at fault here...... focus on the requirement to deter corruption, negligence, administrative incompetence, deceptive and manipulative ploys, all aspects that have compromised many innocent people, and strive for solutions to resolve these crippling realities.

The solution in the BG abuse is simple. It can be achieved by consistent enforcement of a perfectly good Spanish law with adherence to inalienable rights as specified within this law.

If “abusers” and the judiciary ignore offplan purchasers’ INALIENABLE rights applicable in law at the time of contract consent, then what hope is there for other fundamental rights to be respected in Spain?