June 2023

Decision of the Athens Court of First Instance on the annulment of a payment order in the amount of 425.000 euros due to lack of procedural agreement

The decision No. 1869/2023 of the Athens Multi-Member Court of First Instance has been published, by which our appeal was accepted and a payment order issued for an amount of approximately 425,000 euros was cancelled. By that judgment more than one ground of appeal was upheld, relating to the lack of written proof of the bank's claim. 

In particular, the court accepted, first of all, that the contract signed between the borrower company and the credit institution did not contain a clause providing for the bank's trading books to be used as legal evidence to support the issue of a payment order (i.e. the necessary procedural agreement had not been reached). 

Moreover, the court accepted that, even if the above procedural agreement had existed, the payment order should still have been annulled because the extracts from the commercial books submitted by the bank for the payment order did not cover the entire period from the disbursement of the loan to its termination, but only part of that period. The bank's claim was therefore not proven in writing, as required in the payment order procedure. 

The judgment, in particular, held the following: "[...] it is not stated that it was agreed that the amount due should be proved by an extract from the bank's trading books. Furthermore, it is clear from the text of the contract that it did not contain a procedural agreement between the contracting parties which would have made the extracts from the bank's books of account, in which the movement of the account is recorded, an evidence in favour of the issuer, and therefore the extracts produced and taken into account for the purposes of the contested order for payment are, as private documents, devoid of evidential value vis-à-vis third parties [...]. ]". However, no statement of the movement of the account maintained for the purpose of servicing the contract for the period from the signing of the contract on 06.02.2012 to 22.06.2013 was provided. Moreover, in particular, the statement submitted does not set out the movement for the above period, nor was an extract from the account maintained by the lending bank for the period in question. Therefore, the above extract does not show the full movement of the account maintained for the purpose of servicing the loan agreement [...]'.