June 2026 – Annulment of payment order for an amount exceeding €3,000,000 concerning a Swiss franc loan
Issuance of decision no. 1005/2026 of the Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Athens (Special Procedure for Property Disputes) – Annulment of a payment order for the amount of €3,056,351.71, plus interest and legal costs, due to the absence of written proof of the claim of a Servicer company arising from an amortizing loan denominated in Swiss francs.
Recently, decision no. 1005/2026 of the Multi-Member Court of First Instance of Athens was issued, by which the objection/opposition (anakopi) filed by our clients against payment order no. 8861/2025 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens — which had been issued against them — was upheld.
By the contested payment order, our clients — as principal debtor and guarantor respectively — had been required to pay, jointly and severally, to the respondent Servicer company the amount of €3,056,351.71 (originally CHF 2,908,167.74), plus default interest and legal costs of €46,248. The alleged debt arose from an amortizing loan agreement in the amount of €2,000,000, which had been granted in 2006 by the original lending bank for the purchase of business premises and which was serviced in Swiss francs, while the respondent was acting as Servicer of the claims of a foreign special-purpose entity, the special successor of the original creditor bank.
More specifically, the Court found well-founded our ground of opposition by which we maintained that the contested payment order had been issued without the respondent’s claim — and, above all, the amount of that claim — being proven in writing. As the decision accepted, for the issuance of the payment order the respondent had submitted a statement of movements of the loan accounts maintained only for the period from 14/01/2020 onwards, without submitting the complete account history from the commencement of the credit. Given that the debt was alleged to have already been acknowledged in writing by our clients as early as 29/03/2019, while the account maintained as at 14/01/2020 opened with a substantial debit balance, a critical period intervened during which debits and credits took place, for which the respondent submitted no supporting documentation whatsoever. The Court therefore held that elements necessary for the written proof of the existence and the amount of the claim had been omitted, concluding that “the contested payment order was issued contrary to law and, specifically, in violation of the provisions of Articles 623, 626 para. 3 and 628 of the Code of Civil Procedure, due to the absence of the procedural prerequisite of written proof of the amount owed by the opponents.”
It is noteworthy that the Court once again confirmed the established principle according to which written proof of the claim constitutes a special procedural prerequisite for the issuance of a payment order: if the claim or its amount is not proven by the documents attached to the application, the judge must, pursuant to Article 628 of the Code of Civil Procedure, refrain from issuing the order; and if it is nevertheless issued despite the absence of this prerequisite, it is annulled following opposition by the debtor on grounds of procedural inadmissibility, irrespective of the existence of the claim and the possibility of proving it by other evidentiary means, even subsequently.
In view of the above, our clients were fully vindicated: the Court, upholding the opposition and without even requiring examination of the remaining grounds raised therein, annulled payment order no. 8861/2025, releasing our clients from an alleged debt exceeding €3,000,000, and ordered the respondent Servicer company to pay their legal costs.
The decision emphatically highlights the importance of scrutinizing the completeness of the documents submitted by Servicer companies, particularly with regard to the continuous and complete history of the loan accounts from the commencement of the credit, as a necessary prerequisite for the lawful issuance of an enforceable title against borrowers.