Del Canto Chambers thought as the well-placed firm to claim back for floor-clauses mortgages
The specialised website Spanish Property Insight has published an article, by market analyst and consultant Mark Stücklin, in which it has been quoted our Managing Partner, León Fernando del Canto, with regard to the recently approved Decree on floor clauses extrajudicial procedure’:
“This is what Fernando Del Canto, a barrister qualified to practise in Spain and the UK, who has written on the subject for the Times and the Huffington Post, has to say about the Decree.
“Against a decision of the highest court, the CJEU, the Government gives more oxygen to the worst practices of the Spanish banking system against a citizenship which has hardly started to recover from a crisis provoked by those same Banks .
This nefarious Decree, lacking all legal logic, establishes an extrajudicial procedure to elude the res judicata, and damaging the most basic consumers’ rights.
In the first place it blocks the immediate repayment of the interest illegally charged by the banks, as the European Court orders. And I stress that they are “illegal interests” as to continue calling them “undue interests” is an euphemism that does not recognize the existence of an unappealable judicial ruling.
Secondly, the three-months period that this new Decree gives to the Bank harms consumer rights as it increases “de facto” to three months the current two months that the banks must comply with to reply to customer complaints, established by Order ECC / 2502/2012, of November 16.
Thirdly, the banks have one month from the publication of this new regulation to adapt to the new process, thus acquiring an additional month to make a first offer, which only marks the beginning of a lengthy negotiation process.
Thus this procedure, which is supposed to guarantee customer rights and support an already crowded court system,only strengthens the delaying tactics of a banking system reluctant to accept the decision of the European Court.
Therefore, the banks are reducing the accounting reserves made last year following this Decree as it seems that the compensations to be paid will be lower than expected.”
On what borrowers should do when claiming for their floor-clauses mortgages, Mark Stücklin advises that “I believe this Decree makes it even more necessary for foreign borrowers to group together behind a Rottweiler legal team to get the compensation they are entitled to by law. (…) it also makes the whole process easier for foreign borrowers, as a specialist lawyer in Spain does all the work”.
In this sense, Stücklin quotes León Fernando del Canto again by saying that “I have teamed up with Fernando Del Canto’s legal firm Del Canto Chambers, with operations in Spain, the UK, and the Middle East, because I believe they are well placed to provide this service to people who have taken out mortgages in Spain, especially foreign borrowers. They are grouping clients by lender, which gives them more weight in negotiations with banks, and I am helping them reach potential clients. Del Canto Chambers offer standard legal fees or no-win-no-fee, so you can choose what suits you best“.
