Alan3737

Hi Folks

I wonder if anyone out there can help or advise me.

I was caught up in the SWAP scandal a few years ago and the final result was that to get out of the swap scheme I had to pay Banco Popular 15000 euros to do this on top of the bill I received every year until I had to close it.

The total paid to them was over 30000 euros. The SWAP Scheme was declared illegal and I am now in court in January to reclaim this. We never got any paperwork at all from them and they are fobbing off both myself and my solicitor. They are contesting the fact I had to pay them 15000 euros to get out of the SWAP which obviously I did.

Has anyone been through a similar experience about the 15000 euros . Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Regards

Alan 3737

snikpoh

You do know that Banco Popular no longer exists? It is now Santander.

Alan3737

Hi
I do know it was bought over . But it is still trading as Banco Popular.

cindyp

Hi Alan

We were also caught up in this and i started a thread in 2010 which i last updated in 2013. It (now closed) on the forum. You can read the details here.

Clip /Swap Mortgages - Bankinter

To cut a very long story short, we have had nearly 9 years of legal action against bankinter who are one of the worst banks to deal with in reclaiming mis sold SWAP costs - they always go to court. From what I can gather most of the judgements rule against Bankinter but they insist on taking it all the way with appeals, hence it has taken us 9 years to get there.

We paid 18000 euro to get out of our contract in 2010. Finally after appeals to the high court etc our judgement was upheld and Bankinter were ordered to pay us 37,000 euro in repayment of the penalty, our court costs and statuory interest. That was in April 2018. 9 months on, they had refused to pay the money and we had to take them to court again and they were given 30 days to pay. Fnally they paid up 22,000 euro about a month ago. we are still waiting for the rest of the money, which is the court costs plus interest, amounting to a further 15,000 euro. The wheels of justice run very slowly in spain.

Bankinter were ordered to 'put us back in the same position as we had not had the mortgage. I don't think our ruling does that (or at least our compensation doesn't ) because the mortgage has not been reamortised. All we have been awarded is interest over 10 years on the penalty we paid, plus the court costs. If the mortgage had been reamortised it would have been more. As we are now resident in spain we may have to pay tax on the amount received. It all seems very unfair but at least it is something.

If you want to pursue it, I would recommend you use ASUFIN.com as patricia Suarez and her team are the most knowledgeable about these cases and have been doing this for 11 years or more. They are largely responsible for it actually being possible to reclaim from the banks. ASUFIN have fought thousands of cases against all the major spanish banks so they know exactly how the banks behave and what tricks they have up their sleeves. Their lawyers have faced the banks lawyers many times in court. they will not be fobbed off and cowed by the banks as they know the rights of the consumers and they know they were mis sold. The judges also know that the mortgages were mis sold. They do not charge exhorbitant fees.

https://www.asufin.com/

We were with ASUFIN originally but we had to break away from them as our lawyer who was a founder of ASUFIN left the group and as she had good knowledge of our case and we trusted in her, we decided to stay with her. If it had not have been for that we would have stayed with ASUFIN. We were unlucky that our case was a little complicated (we had joined a group action and Bankinter appealed against it being a group action so we had to restart again with just us which is why it all took 9 years in total. I would think now that it should not take too long as you are already part of the way though. although you may not wish to change lawyers. It depends what sort of faith you have in your existing lawyer, particularly if your lawyer is not spanish or does not have much experience in fighting these cases.

I'm assuming that you have asked your bank to refund the money and they have refused and you have been forced to take them to court.

If you have any of your old bank statements from your bank showing your mortgage repayments the statements would also show the penalty that you paid and the mortgage interested deducted. But ASUFIN would probably be able to help you even without the relevant paperwork and they likely have the clout to force the bank to give you the information.

you may have to be patient... it really does take a very long time to get these things through the courts. You will get back your court costs. You wont get back any other costs (ie your lawyers travel expenses or your travel expenses, subsistence etc).
Good luck

Loafing Along

Just to give you some encouragement today in Invertia good article on how the banks are making huge provisions for pending litigation including Santander as owner of Popular

https://www.invertia.com/es/noticias...pleitos-254283

cindyp

I'm just commenting on this thread again as an update to say that we finally got the rest of our money paid. In the end, it wasn't 15,000 that was due (apparently that had been a possible estimate!) - we ended up with a further 7,000 euros as interest due on the 9 years or so up to the date of the judgement. This interest should have been paid to us in April 2018 and it was actually paid into the Courts account and somehow they couldn't or wouldn't pay it until now (I've never had a satisfactory explanation despite asking for one). Its now 2 years and 4 months later that we finally received it so technically we should have had a further 2 years of interest added but I just can't be faffed to pursue it. So in the end, after nearly 11 or so years, we got back 22,000 euro which was the penalty we paid plus our court costs (those that were awarded - we lost the original costs for the group action) plus this 7,000 means that we got 29,000 euro. We will likely have to pay tax on the interest amount.

As I said before, I don't think we were really properly compensated as the mortgage should have been re-amortized but again, I'm not pursuing that one. Just glad it's not hanging over us any more.

Good luck to anyone else who takes on a spanish bank - you'll have to have a lot of patience and just keep on keeping on.

As I said above, if I had to do it again I would use ASUFIN https://www.asufin.com/ as they have huge experience and many lawyers who are experts in this area.

jonboy

Fortunately I have not been affected by this issue but a big thank you to cindyp for taking the time and making the effort to share her experience and knowledge with us.

Thank you