Joe Duggan (Reporter)
A BANK whose multi-million-euro equity release scheme left hundreds of European homeowners ruined has failed to evict an 85-year-old British Alzheimer’s sufferer in Ronda.
Landsbanki, which filed for insolvency in Spain in March, attempted to foreclose on the woman and her husband, but its recent Ronda court case has now stalled.
It is thought around 350 Spanish-based mortgage holders, many of them British, have lost an average of €5-600,000 each in the same scheme.
The schemes, which allowed pensioners to borrow 100% of the value of their homes, have been banned in the UK since 1990, but were sold to Britons abroad in the early 2000s.
“The couple in Ronda is one of the worst cases I have seen. There is zero heart being shown,” said Antonio Flores, representing lawyer from Lawbird in Spain.
“They came to Spain and bought a house worth €500,000. When these mortgage loans were taken out they massively overvalued the properties and gave them an €800,000 loan.
“They tried to foreclose on the couple, we asked the Spanish Prosecutor Service to represent her because she is incapacitated.”
The unnamed British woman signed the equity release scheme while suffering from dementia in 2005.
The Icelandic bank, whose officials face a criminal trial in Paris over the failed scheme, posted its insolvency adverts in a Spanish newspaper this month.
Landsbanki collapsed at the start of Spain’s housing crisis in 2008.
Well, you know ‘Business is business’. In banking one must make objective decisions!
All very well to show that part of the story.. but these products were marketed to fairly wealthy people. Secondly the money released was often used to invest in the banks own products ( investments ) , so you just had people willing or naive that leveraged themselves up to the hilt, were they thinking there is a free lunch?
Would that be your answer had they swindled you or your family..???????….there business is monkey business…!!
i think Facts are required here…hard facts…they were sold a product to which they were not licensed to sell….the bank them selves invested the equity into what should have been low risk investments…the bank invested in high risk and lost…….none of it stacks up and these poor people whether they were wealthy or not and by the letter of the law have been swindled.
Irony, mate, irony…