An Estepona Court has order an indefinite stay of proceedings in respect to a foreclosure case brought by Nordea against a Danish Equity Release victim.
Nordea’s aggressive stance was met with resistance from lawyers acting for the customer, who invoked the abusiveness of the early maturity or redemption clauses and the pending resolution by the European Court of Justice, who will decide on their potential illegality.
STANDARD CONTRACT TERMS – SCTs
All financial products are subject to SCTs between investor/borrow and bank/product provider.
Many of the visible terms in these contracts are grossly unfair …. whilst additional unfair “terms” are cleverly concealed.
Amongst the tricks employed by the banks and financial product providers include:-
* Concealing draconian early exit penalties
* Representing unqualified and incompetent “agents” as professional IFAs
* Failing to disclose huge commissions paid to agents
* Neglecting to disclose fees, charges and commissions paid to accountants, lawyers and third parties.
* Failing to disclose conflicting interests between banks, their agents and the public
The financial services industry now appears to view their products as an opportunity to rob the public rather than assist the public. To this end they cloak their SCTs in vague, technical jargon which are indecipherable to the public – and sometimes to their own employees!
A huge number of scams operated in Spain by fraudulent companies sometimes based in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are responsible for many thousands of pensioners losing their life savings and sometimes their homes. This has bought disgrace and shame on the industry and people now flee in terror at even the mention of “investment funds”, “mortgages”, “equity release schemes” or even simple savings accounts.
Standard Contract Terms (SCT)
Unfair Contract Terms (UCT)
Rip-Off Contract Terms (RCT)
The three are often undistinguishable from each other.
I could not agree more. The mere mention of banks, investment portfolios and 5 year horizons sends shivers down my spine. Nordea was one of the worst culprits. Their method was somewhat simplified, to their minds. Once they had lost some 25% of the value of the portfolio they converted the investments to cash as they admitted they did not want to lose any more money. Then started foreclosure proceedings to recoup the money they had lost by their incompetence. If only they had left the money in the portfolios, eventually they would have clawed most, if not all of the monies back. Now we hear that Nordea Private Bank Luxembourg have abandoned the sinking ship and sold out to another bank. At last the courts are slowly coming to realise the gravity of the situation that Nordea have left many of their customers in and refusing to rule in the banks favour in foreclosure proceedings.