Published: 05/22/2024 11:27
Euribor rate manipulated for mortgages: a new ruling from the Supreme Court freezes consumers. After the granting of a partial reimbursement of interest, admitted a few months ago, the Court imposes a series of additional burdens on savers. The ruling changes the panorama of the Euribor case in a negative way. Savers with pending lawsuits who are trying to get thousands of euros of undue interest back could pay the price. Mortgages and financing taken out between 29 September 2005 and 30 May 2008.
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The Antitrust sanction
The European Antitrust had already sanctioned four large European banks in 2023. This is Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and the Royal Bank of Scotland group. The groups had built a cartel aimed at manipulating the Euribor rate, thus illicitly altering the market for variable rate loans. After this last decision, the Court of Cassation had established that reimbursement of the interest unjustly applied could be requested from all the banks, not just the four that had organized the cartel. According to some calculations, based on previous sentences and official technical advice, consumers could obtain the repayment of 7,000 euros for every 100,000 loans.
The Supreme Court ruling
Good another tone it is sentence 12007/2024 published on 3 May. In which the Court of Cassation, while theoretically confirming the right to partial reimbursement of interest, requires bank customers to demonstrate various facts. If the bank was not part of the cartel, it will be necessary to demonstrate that the institution was aware of those illegitimate agreements.
The mode: the way, according to lawyer Smeralda Capetti, one of Aduc’s lawyers, is to “assume that the bank could not have failed to know. By reconstructing the contracts downstream, in fact, it is possible to show that the banks, despite not having taken part in the agreement, reproduced the same scheme, effectively participating in the manipulation of the rate, because they continued to do so even after the Antitrust ruling”.
According to Cappetti, the sentence “was in the air, because in recent months, when we asked the banks to return the sums, they denied it, claiming that they had never taken part in the Euribor cartel” however “it doesn’t close to compensation, it asks for more stringent requirements, burdening the customer with a burden that wasn’t there before”.
The most constructive hypotheses
He is also optimistic about the successful outcome of the cases Monica Mandico, lawyer and banking law expert: “There is no conflict with the previous ruling. Of course, the consumer is burdened with a burden that wasn’t there before, however those who have been following the story for years already have the necessary documentation to prove the manipulation of Euribor”, concludes the lawyer, preferring however not to specify in detail how .
The reading of Antonio Pinto, lawyer of Confconsumatori, according to whom “in light of this sentence, unfortunately it is not even worth starting a lawsuit, the outcome of which thus becomes a real lottery”. The judges of Rome have “emptied the previous sentence of all effectiveness”, he continues, and the reference is to the fourth to last page of the sentence, where it is established that, to obtain reimbursement, three things must be proven”.
“That the bank manipulation sanctioned by the European Antitrust has effectively altered the Euribor. Whether, for what time and to what extent that alteration significantly affected the interest rate applied by the contract in question. What are the consequences of a possible nullity of the clauses of the contract on the “overall negotiation structure” and on the possibility that the minimum legal rate is applied”.
“The three checks that are asked of the consumer are impossible to do. Above all, the second point, then, suggests that even if we were able to demonstrate the impact of the rate manipulation on the contract, if this were not considered “significant” by the judge, it would still be lost”. The new sentence, adds Pinto, also impacts the cases already started in recent months.
