The organization “Young Barristers” spreads the statement and notes out, that during the recent months, certain financial companies have become more active, who, in the forms of coercion and intimidation ask the citizens to repay money on consumer loans, for which the legal deadline to provide the demand has already expired or the Government of Georgia has already paid that loans for them. The organization names the company “Financial bureau” as one of such companies.
According to “Young Barrister’s” lawyer, Berdia Jajanidze, the issue of the behavior and good faith of such companies is unclear. There are two types of problems, when the loan is overdue and the law doesn’t give opportunity to the financial companies to demand the fulfillment of the financial obligations, but still, they try to mislead the customer and restore the statue of limitations and the second circumstance is when in 2018, the Government of Georgia implemented a loan repayment program, but the portfolio of bad loans was transferred to banks or other microfinance organizations. Nowadays, the extracting companies are trying to restore the statute of limitations on the hopeless loans. There are numerous lawsuits already filed in such courts. In parallel with the lawsuits, the representatives of the company contact with the sides and offer them a settlement of the dispute, redistribution of the obligation and the restructurization of it, annulment of the procent and repayment of the main amount, which is done in terms of threats, harassment and intimidation. The organization is in the process of one of such ongoing cases in the Batumi City Court Civil Cases Panel and we have a victim already there.
The “Young Barristers” address the citizens, that during such kind of conversations with the extracting companies, do not agree on any terms connected with the old loans in order not to promise the fulfillment of obligations. The organization notes outs, that there are more and more cases, when the conversation with the customer is recorded, about that the citizen is warned in advanced by the company’s representative and that conversation later is used in court to prove that the citizen recognizes the obligation to pay the loan in some kind of form.
The institutie of the statute of limitations is analyzed in the Georgian legal space by Article 128 of the Civil Code of Georgia, which has repeatedly become the subject of explanation by the common courts and the Constitutional Court of Georgia. The legal essence of it corresponds to the standard established by the decision of the European Court of human Rights, according to which the institution of statue of limitations is an integral part of the constitutional order. “The statute of limitations serves several important purposes, namely, legal certainty and finality, the protection of potential defendants from old lawsuits, from which it may be difficult to defend as well as to avoid injustice, which may arise if the court get obliged to decide the cases, which happened in the distant past, based on evidence that may be unreliable or incomplete due to the passage of time…” (see STUBBINGS AND OTHERSS VS THE UNITED KINGDOM, 22 October, 1996). Therefore, the organization warns the citizens, that such lawsuits have no legal perspective and they should be subjet to blackmail by extractive companies.
And as for the “Financial Bureau”, the organization has already addressed an official letter to them. The organization hopes that the company will obey the rules and it waits for the justice to be served. The organization expresses it’s readiness to provide legal assistance to people with similar problems.
