Antonio Flores’ Blog

This is the question I was asked the other day by one of my clients who was about to show me the letter he had just received from his lender, the Danske Bank.

I am appealing to your empathy, and, to that extent, I want you to sit back and think, think how would you feel if after a life of hard work, when you were about to reap the deserved enjoyments of retirement and you had invested all your savings to purchase a hilltop beautiful villa on the Costa del Sol, the following happened (chronologically):

• You landed in Spain having sold your property in the country where you lived the last 60 years, cashed your pension and emptied your local bank accounts.
• You bought your retirement home with your life time savings, mortgage free.
• One sunny Saturday, one bloke, who happened to be a friend of a friend, turned up for lunch with a grin the size of a half-moon.
• After a few glasses of wine and after listening patiently to a rather boring recount of what you think is a vivid lifetime of experiences (might be for you, not for your new friend), this bloke, who you now think is a new friend, reacting with apparent anguish suddenly interrupts you to enquire whether your children are sufficiently protected against Spanish Inheritance Tax, which he conveniently sells as a happiness killer.
• Since by now, owing to the sun and the wine, you trust him, you open your ears and eyes as he explains that you are in serious danger of ruining your future, and that of your children.
• Avid to learn more, you enquire, and because he is in a hurry, he suddenly and quickly offers you a miraculous financial instrument to ensure that not only your unencumbered home is protected but also, you will have a monthly payment for life.
• By now you are well sober, listening to the wonder product that will protect your family plus give you some pocket money. Your friend tells you that he works for Danske Bank and that he can help.

[…]

A few years down the line

• Your friend has disappeared, your property has an embargo on it, Danske Bank is asking you to return €850,000 which you never saw and then you receive, by post, the following letter (click to open in PDF):

• Difficult as it is, you manage to read the letter, and you understand what it implies: your own bank, Danske Bank, without you ever writing to them, and who was entrusted with looking after, investing and providing a return on €1,030,000 (and which they managed to reduce by €850,000 thanks to cautious investing), which they extracted from your home on false pretences has the gall, in spite of it all, to let you know that you happen to have instructed them to debit your  (blocked) account with €23,703, in cover of “LEGAL COSTS” in favour of their own lawyers’ account in Spain so that these lawyers can…errr, sue YOU and repossess YOUR home, after having efficiently lost your life time savings in some volatile very-high-risk Luxembourg bond that was sold to you as cautious.

You have now discovered what the “Danske Bank Kick in the Bollocks” is all about!

Antonio Flores Litigation, Mortgages, Property bank repossessions, Danske Bank, equity release, financial miss selling in Spain, reverse mortgages