Tag archives for Yvette Hamilius

CHANGE OF FORTUNES: BANKS SET TO LOSE MILLIONS WORTH OF EQUITY RELEASE CONTRACTS

20th November 2017 by admin under Legal Action     

Landbanki Luxembourg

A recent ruling by the Appeal Court of Bilbao -confirming an earlier ruling by the Court of First instance-is to set the ground for future cases on the so-called Equity Release mortgage loans.  Three Judges in the Basque High Court have ruled that banks -and by extension any other financial services company- that do not have a valid operating license will see their agreements declared null and void, be it mortgage loans, investment contracts or any other.

In late 2014, 20 pensioners (mostly British) bought an action to set aside 12 equity release mortgage loans -worth 6 million euros- against SLM, a Cheshire-based lender. The lender had not secured the mandatory regulatory license although they did warn they had no license to operate in Spain as, according to them, they were only providing lending for customers seeking to raise cash on their homes.

Now, the Bilbao Appeal Court has said the warning was no ‘mitigating’ factor because it misled the claimants into believing that the loan they were sold was financially secure when, in fact, most of it was invested via unregulated Isle of Man-based-dubious Premier-Group.

The relevance of the ruling, which brings an end to the suffering of the victims of this scam, is twofold: it nullifies contracts issued by unregulated companies and it fully endorses the allegations of the claimants that the widely publicized Inheritance Tax benefits were false, emphasizing that such conduct is deceitful and fraudulent.

It is believed that defunct Luxembourg-based Landsbanki Bank had lent a staggering 100 million euros in Spain to reduce death duties that thankfully will be difficult to recoup, whilst Rothschild Group could be set to lose 40 million Euros.

 

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Legal Action Against Landsbanki Luxembourg, Lex Life Luxembourg S.A. and Offshore Money Managers

25th May 2015 by admin under Legal Action     

LETTER TO LANDSBANKI CUSTOMERS ARE SENT BY FIRM LAWBIRD LEGAL SERVICES

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are due to soon file proceedings against Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A., Lex Life Luxembourg S.A. (and/or its successor) and Offshore Money Managers.

The main reason for the delay in filing has been due to our firm considering, in the light of the content of writs submitted by  Landsbanki Luxembourg, that a claim for misleading advertising should include also excerpts of the cases where Landsbanki lawyers admit –in at least there occasions- that the main reason why this product was offered to the public was as means to -legally- reduce or mitigate Spanish Inheritance Tax.

These crucial undertakings by Landsbanki lawyers indicate that the bank willfully engaged in marketing and selling a bogus tax planning scheme, as confirmed by the Spanish Tax Office in 2013. More so, Landsbanki lawyers confirmed that a brochure explaining the inheritance tax planning was give out to all clients and that this was therefore one of the main reasons, if the principal, for property owners to acquire an Equity Release.

The case is therefore aimed at establishing whether the advertising was truthful or not and where not, from the point of view of an average reader, if the content would have been explicit enough to persuade readers to acquire the Equity Release Scheme. This signals a departure from classic the case argument aimed at establishing misselling of financial investments took place and rather concentrates on the tax mitigation perpective.

It is only through this strategy that we will be able to request that art. 1,306 of the Civil Code is applied to these cases, the only real option to avoid having to repay the draw down if there is a successful outcome.

Article 1,306. If the deed which constitutes the unlawful cause should not constitute a crime or misdemeanour, the following rules shall be observed:

  1. Where both contracting parties are at fault, none of them may recover what he has given pursuant to the contract, or claim the performance of what the other should have offered.
  2. Where only one contracting party is at fault, he may not recover what he has given pursuant to the contract, or demand the performance of what he should have been offered. The other, who was a stranger to the unlawful cause, may claim what he has given, without the obligation to perform what he should have offered.

Along with Landsbanki and the successor of Lex Life, we have decided to issue proceedings against OMM (Offshore Money Managers), a pseudo-IFA who was nonetheless prolific in their advertising efforts to bring customers and banks together.

Finally, the firm Cuatrecasas –no longer acting for Landsbanki or Lex Life- has confirmed in writing that they never contributed or cooperated in providing any tax planning advice, contrary to what Lex-Life advertising stated; this statement automatically renders the advertising untruthful.

With respect to potential foreclosure action by Landsbanki, we will request that the bank is served with an injunction preventing them from enforcing the mortgage loan rights they hold.

Best regards

 

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Landsbanki Sacks Cuatrecasas Law Firm

13th April 2015 by admin under Legal Action     

Following the revelation that the boss of Landsbanki’s legal team in Spain, Emilio Cuatrecasas, had come under fire from the Spanish Tax Office, Yvette Hamilius decided to pull the plug on them and appoint Plazas Abogados, based in Marbella and Sotogrande.

This move comes as a surprise since Plazas Abogados was one of the legal firms that actively participated, in the years 2005-2008, in the perpetration of this widespread scam.

Plazas Abogados have since confirmed that Landsbanki’s product did not aim to avoid IHT, adding that the bank did not offer the Equity Release product to avoid IHT.

Sadly for Plazas, two different lawyers for Cuatrecasas have argued quite the contrary: that the Equity Release was a popular product to minimize IHT and that this was the main reason why they bought into it (sic).

Read Landsbanki’s Torben Bjerregaard explaining all that needs to be known about IHT (translation required): http://www.sydspanien.dk/article.170.html

 

 

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