September 2023

Decision of the Athens Court of First Instance on the cancellation of a payment order of approximately 700.000€

The decision of the Athens Court of First Instance, No. 2437/2023, which annulled a payment order of €700,000, under which an auction of the debtor's property was accelerated, has been published.

The judgment upheld a ground of appeal relating to procedural defects in the contested payment order and, in particular, to the failure to comply with the conditions of written proof of the claim in respect of which it was issued. 

In particular, in order to prove the existence and the amount of the claim of the opposing credit institution, a document was produced which showed the movement of one of the accounts for servicing the contested credit. That document bore a certificate from the attorney of the applicant for the payment order that it was certified as 'an exact copy of an original extract, legally extracted by printing from the computerised commercial registers' of the lending bank. However, in the absence of an attestation by the competent officials of the latter bank as to the authenticity of the printout, the court held that the document in question did not have the character of a document within the meaning of the evidentiary agreement included in the loan agreement at issue and, therefore, could not be used to prove the claim against the debtor in the context of a payment order. In the decisive considerations of the judgment: "... the abovementioned document ... produced by the applicant ... is not a copy of the original extract extract extracted from its electronic commercial registers, since it does not bear the certificate of its competent officials as to the authenticity of its printing, so that it can be assimilated to a document within the meaning of ... of the contract at issue and a copy of that document, certified by its lawyer, may be produced as written proof of the claim at issue. The only certificate contained in the relevant ... that constitutes independent evidence from the other copies of the movement of the service accounts of the contract in dispute that were produced is that of the authentication of the exact copy of the original by the applicant's attorney ... without including in the certified copy a certificate from its competent officials as to the authenticity of the printout of the extract, so that it may be treated as a document in accordance with the agreement contained in the contract'. The court based the independence of that document in relation to the other copies of service account movements produced on the 'distinct numbering of the document when the statement of opposition was issued, which implies that it was relied on and produced separately, and on the fact that it relates to a different service account from the other copies of movements produced, as the relevant ..., for the movement of service account no. ... account' and finally annulled the payment order, since 'the aforementioned relevant ... is not an extract from the applicant bank's commercial books, so that its lawyer could certify the exact copy'.