Harassed home buyers to sue cheating bank in the north
By Simon Bahceli
Published on April 21, 2011
A GROUP of British expats who fell foul of dodgy land developers in the north have launched legal proceedings against a bank that they say acted illegally in seeking to repossess their properties.
Privately-owned Akfinans Bank faces accusations of accepting as collateral properties already sold to the expats when it provided a loan of 41,600 pounds sterling to a firm known as Kulaksiz Developments in 2004.
When Kulaksiz defaulted on the loan, Akfinans moved to possess the nine properties it had developed in the coastal village of Vasilli. This it did despite the fact that the purchasers of the properties had no knowledge of the loan. The owners of Kulaksiz have allegedly since absconded to Turkey.
The British purchasers of the nine properties say they have never had relations with the bank, and that they will fight to retain or regain the houses they paid for. While two families have already been evicted, the remaining seven properties remain occupied by the families Akfinans hope to evict.
The case again highlights the perils of purchasing property in north Cyprus, where over 80 per cent of sales involve properties owned by Greek Cypriots. The Kulaksiz development too was build on Greek Cypriot-owned land.
Akfinans Bank and a lawyer representing it refused to comment yesterday, but the bank will face accusations that it acted illegally when it sought to possess properties from people to whom it did not supply the loan.
“The Bank does not have any legal right to acquire the homes of our clients,” a statement from Boysan Bora, the lawyer acting on behalf of the expats, said in a press statement. It added that “any agreement made in the absence of our clients, and any decision given by any authority without them being informed, is null and void”.
He said that according to the ‘Mortgage Law of the TRNC’, the creditor, before mortgaging the property, is obliged to search and see whether other people have any right on the mortgaged property or not. “The law obligates the creditor to name even a tenant residing on the property,” Bora said.
The prominent Turkish Cypriot lawyer said he would also seek compensation for the “great suffering and damage to our clients” caused by the bank’s efforts to possess the properties. Examples of the suffering caused, apart from the actual eviction of some of the residents, range from attempting to run one homeowner down with a car to changing locks while residents were out. The residents say they have also been treated with contempt by the Turkish Cypriot authorities and are under regularly harassed by the local police.
“Akfinans Bank, instead of searching for legal opinion and waiting for Courts’ decisions, escalated its efforts against our clients. The Bank tried to throw our clients out of their homes before any courts’ decision,” Bora said, adding: “The homebuyers at Kulaks?z have been in possession of their homes since 2004. The husband of one of the homebuyers died a year ago and she had to go to England. The Bank tried to use this opportunity, changed the locks of her house and moved in,”
Bora’s statement also hit out at Akfinans’ efforts to gag the press by saying, “The Bank is trying to get an injunction from the court to stop the press reporting. This is something unheard of in the world. This is an unbelievable breach of human rights”. Earlier this month Akfinans managed to secure an injunction on media outlets in the north from reporting on the case. However, a court repealed it after just a few days of its being in place.
Bora will also attempt to sue Akfinans for charging what he believes were extortionate rates of interest on the loan to the Kulaksiz developers. He will do this despite the fact that currently there are no laws in the north limiting the amount of interest that can be charged on a bank loan. In this particular case, Bora says Akfinans charged a rate of 250 per cent, which, when Kulaksiz defaulted, gave the bank the “right” to seize nine houses on the Kulaksiz plot in the village of Vasilli.
The lawyer says that although the case is still ongoing, he has already applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasburg for a hearing on his clients’ behalf because he does not have faith courts in the north will act fast enough to provide justice to his elderly clients.
“Normally one has to exhaust all local remedies before going to the European Court of Human Rights, but in exceptional circumstances it is possible,” he said.
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/british-expa ... h/20110421
...and from the comments on the Cyprus Mail website:
Aglangiotis A
So carpetbaggers can go to the ECHR to reclaim their property, but the Greek Cypriots who are the real owners of this property have to go to the IPC?
