PEPEX, the new ‘pre-executive extra-judicial procedure’ that enabled creditors to find out in advance whether debtors have assets, has been used to good effect by Portugal’s un-loved telecommunications companies.
Operational since November 2014, the extra-judicial procedure that allows creditors to know whether those who owe them money have assets to nab, and evaluate whether it is worth going to court, so far has kept 30,000 customers out of court as there have been no assets registered to seize and liquidate.
In a report in today's Jornal de Notícias, José Carlos Resende, the president of Portugal’s Chamber of Solicitors, says the new process is working well.
Resende also said that the largest customers of this simplified procedure are telcoms companies which have been benefiting from the accurate information provided about customers’ property and goods.
If there are no assets worth collecting, the companies have been avoiding the court process and writing off the sums involved, enabling them at least to get a VAT refund on the sums owed.
In the first six months of operation, Pepex already has been used to in assessing €33 million owed, in 93% of cases the amount of debt was less than €2,000.
Comments
But as always there will be a Portuguese twist to this to protect the VIP elite. And that PEPEX was only ever intended to be a stick to hit the little people over the head with.
Note that these searches apparently "kept 30,000 customers out of court as there have been no assets registered to seize and liquidate." So how many of these are desperately poor and should be given leniency ...
And how many substantially rich but with good lawyers and accountants? Who the VIP elite will have instructed to put their assets in relatives and friends accounts - or off-shore.
No doubt PEPEX will intentionally not allow you, a creditor, to go after the debtors next of kin or close friends. Even though the world and his wife knows that, as with ex-PM Socrates, that is where the assets are.
And how would you ever prove it sufficient to justify a court action, when in Latino countries everyone's bank accounts and tax affairs are sacrosanct? So must have been accessed illegally.
Sacrosanct unless of course, like BES, it is the bank manager doing the pillaging!
As the lawyer who had the order passed on behalf of the phone company was himself in jail due to an unrelated case, the order could not be rescinded even after the bill was paid; the property sale was frozen, and life for these people was on hold, for 6 months over a 50 Euro phone bill.