The Malaga Appeal Court has rejected a motion filed by Danske Bank lawyers attempting to revoke a decision by the Court of First Instance in Fuengirola that had ordered, some months back, to summon the Danish lender’s managers in their capacity as representatives of the “civilly responsible” party.
The importance of the decision lies with the position of the State Prosecutor Office for, whilst initially they had pressed for the whole Equity Release case to be dismissed (and so had the Fuengirola Judge), in respect to the above appeal their stance can be said to have taken a U-turn when they specifically opposed such appeal.
The bank’s representatives will now have to respond to the questions of the lawyers acting for the Equity Release victim E.A. such as, for example, why did they use the name of K.P.M.G. to convince customers to sign up for the Danske Bank Luxembourg Unit Link/Capital Assurance product when the consultancy mega-firm had never given their blessing to this tax evasion product.
Not only an important decision, a crucial one as well. It would appear that the State Prosecutor has finally realised that these banks have a lot of questions to answer. Let us hope that the tide is turning in favour of the Danske Bank victims and that they will soon be out of what we now know to be illegal equity release schemes. This ruling will undoubtably help everyone. One would hope that all the banks will pick up on this and decide to settle their victims claims before the same befalls them.