Information for damaged clients of the CNB control project

A woman from southern Bohemia extorted money from dozens of consumers by posing as an agent of the Czech National Bank and signing contracts on its behalf to participate in a consumer and mortgage loan control project. Under the pretext of controlling the business practices of financial institutions, her clients were supposed to set up a consumer loan with their bank and send the money to the CNB account specified in the contract. According to the contract, the CNB was to send clients money each month for the repayment of the loan, plus a monthly remuneration of thousands of crowns. In reality, however, CNB's involvement in the project did not exist and the account mentioned in the contract belonged to this woman.

Does this incident concern you? Ask to unlock our article on this topic.

Author of the article: ARROWS (Mgr. Petr Valent, LL.M., office@arws.cz, +420 245 007 740)

It can be reasonably assumed that the fake CNB representative obtained tens of millions of crowns in this way. Some of these funds were apparently actually used to pay monthly instalments and bonuses, so it is not yet clear what amount represents the actual damage. These findings are the subject of an investigation by law enforcement authorities, as several criminal complaints have been filed against the woman.

Application for compensation to the competent police authority

Any victim has the right to claim compensation for the damage suffered in criminal proceedings. This consists of both the unpaid portion of the loan and any interest. The claim for compensation shall be lodged with the competent police authority conducting the investigation. There is no charge for the application and it may be made in the context of an interview with the victim. The victims' claims will then be decided in the context of the court's judgment of guilt and punishment. This judgment then serves as the basis for any enforcement action should the obligation set out in the judgment not be paid voluntarily.The advantage of this procedure is therefore simplicity and minimal costs for the claim. The disadvantages are the length of the process, which can take several years, and the risk that the court may not rule on the damages claims as part of the judgment and instead refer the victims to private law proceedings.

Civil action

The alternative to the above procedure is a civil action for damages. It differs from a claim brought in criminal proceedings in that it is brought in court and is subject to a court fee of 4 or 5% of the amount claimed, depending on the amount and the method of bringing the action. The action must also comply with the requirements laid down by law, which makes it more difficult to prepare and usually avoids the assistance of a lawyer, as do the subsequent court proceedings. The disadvantages of this procedure are therefore higher costs and greater complexity. The advantage may be greater speed; if the court proceedings end in the issue of a payment order, the victim may have the enforcement title within a few weeks of the filing of the action.

Mass representation

ARROWS ETL offers assistance to victims, regardless of which of the above options they choose. In case of collective representation of multiple clients (10 or more), individual terms can be agreed upon that would result in a minimum financial burden for the victims (1,000 CZK plus VAT for filing a claim in criminal proceedings and representing the client as the victim throughout the proceedings, or 2,500 CZK for filing a claim in a lawsuit and representing the client as the victim throughout the proceedings + court fee and VAT). If you are interested, please contact us at office@arws.cz.

Additional questions

For victims who decide to pursue their claims on their own or through other legal counsel, we would like to at least inform them about the ongoing investigation and allow them to ask questions regarding both their participation in the audit project and the way in which the pending loans have been paid. We have therefore decided to set up a special email address projektcnb@gmail.com, through which all victims can raise questions about the resolution of their situations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we would like to point out to the aggrieved clients that at present, further filing of criminal complaints is unnecessary and only burdens the police authority. It is sufficient to file a claim for damages as mentioned above, i.e. to join the criminal proceedings already underway. We also consider it pointless to carry out various legal analyses of the contracts that have been concluded on behalf of the CNB, withdrawals from them, terminations, etc. These contracts are absolutely null and void for being contrary to the law and therefore do not need to be formally terminated in any way.