Persistence Pays Off With Debtor Hiding In France

Having arranged and swiftly defaulted on a contractual loan debt, the Debtor may have thought he had got away with it. Our Lender client had obtained judgment in a Jersey Court but by then, the Debtor had left the jurisdiction and moved abroad.

We first needed to trace the Debtor. He had moved through several jurisdictions and kept a low profile, though with our contacts throughout the UK and Europe we were able to trace him to a small town in France. Once done, we were faced with time limits for taking action against him, these limits in France having ostensibly expired. We approached him and sought to negotiate a settlement with him to no avail, the Debtor believing he was beyond reach in his new jurisdiction. With our French lawyers, we then had to re-open the time periods.

This was a particularly adept Debtor who kept wasting time and inventing spurious arguments.

We had the Lender assign the debt to ourselves, putting us in the position of Creditor and begun a fresh legal action against him in France. The Debtor defended the action, seeking to rely on time lapse; a deal he claimed to have previously struck with the Lender for reduced interest payments; and other perceived procedural irregularities. Following several hearings, the French courts found against our Debtor and awarded us the judgment required. The French process took several years to come to the trial hearing with Covid intervening. Our French agents were pragmatic in the face of which could best be described as gruff and bad points.

Despite having the French judgment against him, the Debtor still refused to pay. We undertook asset tracing and monitored the Debtor to guard against further absconding. The Debtor having spent years wasting everyone’s time now claimed impecuniosity. Ultimately we involved French huissiers (Bailiffs) who were routinely met with claims of inability to pay, evidence of empty bank accounts, and multiple complaints on process from the Debtor.

When ultimately met with the likelihood of the huissiers turning up on his doorstep to take goods from his family home (sometimes there is no option) the Debtor made contact with us and settled his liability. By then he had caused himself a substantial amount of additional costs and interest which could have been avoided had be engaged with us at our initial approach. From the Debtors point of view, it was textbook “how to make a bad situation worse”.

The debt had long since been written off by the Lender and thus our recovery in which they shared, was a welcome relief against this bad debt.

Contact Restitution by clicking here or email us direct at info@restitutionlimited.com

< Back to Success Stories