The collection of court costs arising from the lawsuit initiated by the clients of Adiko Bank due to loans in Swiss francs in the Basic Court will be resolved in two proceedings, where 113 clients will be included in one, and 154 clients in the other.
This was decided yesterday by Judge Milena Matović at a new hearing, after the High Court judged in the latest decision that "the clients lost the case due to the waiver and therefore have to pay the court costs".
The procedure is separated because 113 clients have waived the lawsuit, while 154 clients have not formally withdrawn.
In 2016, the state enabled citizens who took out loans in Swiss francs from Adiko Bank (formerly Hipo Aple Adria Bank) to convert those loans into euros under the conditions that were valid on the day they were taken out, i.e. with a fixed interest rate of 8,2 percent annually and without default interest, but the issue of court costs has not yet been resolved.
Since the middle of 2017, the Basic and Higher Courts have not been able to complete this issue, and the costs in the procedure have grown to nearly two million euros.
The clients who sued Adiko Bank and the factoring company Heta (to which the bank transferred part of the loans it could not collect) gave up the lawsuit in 2016, because the law fulfilled what they demanded in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed in May 2013. The bank approved loans in Swiss francs in 2007 and 2008, and later, due to the change in the exchange rate, installments were drastically increased.
The client's lawyer, Dragomir Ćalasan, said at the hearing yesterday that they stand by everything they have said so far regarding court costs and that they have no special statements regarding the latest decision of the High Court.
The lawyer of Adiko Bank, Vanja Mugoša, proposed to separate the proceedings in order to conduct them separately for 113 clients who renounced the lawsuit, all with the aim of making the proceedings more economical.
"And so that we don't end up in a situation where we meet again based on the lawsuit of 154 plaintiffs due to a possible appeal against the decision on costs for 113 plaintiffs. This is especially because of the damage suffered by Adiko Bank because the Central Bank placed a reservation on the settlement of all loans," explained Mugoša, while Ćalasan opposed that proposal.
Matović ordered that for 154 clients, within 20 days, evidence be submitted as to which of them received an offer to conclude the conversion, which plaintiffs accepted those offers and concluded contracts, and which clients were sued for non-payment of loans under the original and under the contracts on conversion. The hearing will continue in December.
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