The recently published Judgment No. 2136/2026 of the Athens Single-Member Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal filed by a Loan and Credit Claims Management Company (Servicer) and finally annulled a Payment Order that had been issued against our client. Specifically, the Payment Order was set aside due to the absence of documentary proof of the claim, as the opposing party failed to produce copies of the transaction statements of all accounts servicing the credit facility at issue, bearing the required certification of the authenticity of the printout by the competent employee of the Loan and Credit Claims Management Company (Servicer).
It is noteworthy that the appellate court emphasized that the statement of each individual account constitutes a separate and independent document and that the mere stapling or binding together of multiple statements does not transform them into a single document. For this reason, the certification of the authenticity of the printout must appear at the end of each individual statement, even where the statements are physically attached to one another. The Court further stressed that the production of a separate certificate attesting to authenticity is of no relevance, since the relevant certification must appear on the face of the account statements themselves.
The crucial passages of the judgment read verbatim as follows:
“[…] Of the aforementioned account statements, those relating to account No. ……………… for the period from 9 December 2019 to 8 September 2021 and account No. ……………… for the period from 9 December 2019 to 8 September 2021, which were produced in certified copy form, bear a certification by the competent employee of the respondent to the objection – appellant attesting to the authenticity of their printout from electronically maintained books through a dedicated application. However, the remaining certified copies of the aforementioned account statements do not bear such certification, nor even the initials of the competent employee confirming the authenticity of their printout.
Consequently, in accordance with the legal considerations set out immediately above in the present judgment, the certified copies of the account statements produced for account No. ……………… covering the period from 10 June 2011 to 27 December 2017, account No. ……………… covering the period from 10 June 2011 to 27 December 2017, account No. ……………… covering the period from 23 April 2014 to 8 December 2019, account No. ……………… covering the period from 23 April 2014 to 8 December 2019, and account No. ……………… covering the period from 25 February 2015 to 8 December 2019, have not been lawfully drawn up and are not legally capable of providing full proof of their contents as private documents for the purpose of issuing a payment order on their basis.
This conclusion is not affected by the fact that, as asserted by the respondent to the objection – appellant: (a) both the application dated 16 February 2022 and the payment order itself state, manifestly erroneously, that the aforementioned statements were lawfully extracted through printouts from the commercial books maintained electronically, on behalf of the beneficiary, in the systems of the servicing company and bearing the aforementioned certification of authenticity of the printout, since such statement is not binding upon the Court hearing the objection; (b) the copied account statements produced were attached together, since they do not constitute a single and unified statement such that their contents could be covered by the final signature of the employee who carried out the printout, thereby rendering unnecessary the signature of all their pages; and (c) by virtue of Certificate No. ……….. dated 3 April 2020 issued by the competent Information Systems Applications Maintenance Directorate of the Group of the banking corporation ‘………’, it is certified that the historical transactions of the servicing accounts relating to the transferred claims up to 9 December 2019, which were transmitted and delivered to the servicing company on 7 February 2020 in digitised files, are accurate and were extracted from the official electronically maintained commercial books. This document, however, apart from the fact that it was not taken into account for the issuance of the contested payment order, could not cure the aforementioned deficiency in light of express Clause 5 of the agreement at issue, which provides that the relevant certification of the authenticity of the printout must appear on the account statements themselves.”
