Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

The economic crisis is accompanied by unemployment in the private sector (23%), contraction or closure of private businesses, a tax assault against employees (except for the idle payroll holders of the public sector, who enjoy immunity), and inability to meet the obligations of basic subsistence.

This situation turns life into hell and burdens citizens (who are not connected with power) even psychologically. And psychological burden, according to recent studies, reduces the length of life.

The governing faction, unmoved by the drama of citizens (and the opposition likewise), continues to manage public money, collected through unjust taxation and borrowing, in order to appoint followers and, as a priority, relatives (the recent Polydoras case), dependants and friends.

At the same time it takes sporadic measures for show and deception, hypocritically pretending that it is supposedly interested in the people and that it stands by them in their economic drama.

Pharisaism is the pompous government proclamation about establishing a “new regime” for the operation of debt collection companies, with the aim of protecting consumers from “unfair collection harassment”.

The new term “unfair collection harassment” replaced the true name of the unlawful conduct of collection businesses, which rushed like vultures and hyenas against vulnerable citizens in order to tear them apart. They were even responsible for deaths of debtors who preferred to end their lives after threats and blackmail, so as not to suffer the painful consequences of being unable to satisfy their usurers.

As “unfair collection harassment” were described the coercive pressures, threats and telephone tortures by the specially trained employees of professional extortionists, that is, the “debt collection companies”, against debtors of banks, many of whom paid two, three or more times the money they had been persuaded to take from banking corporations, which present themselves not as usurers and predators but as supposedly… “credit institutions”.

Specifically, the establishment of a “new operating regime for debt collection companies with the aim of protecting consumers from unfair collection harassment” was announced!

More particularly, Dimitris Spyrakos, secretary general for consumers (one wonders how many secretaries general our little state feeds), on the occasion of the publication of Law 4038/2012 concerning the

“Urgent regulations relating to the implementation of the medium-term fiscal strategy framework 2012-2015” (Government Gazette 14 A),

  • which in Article 36 contains provisions amending and supplementing Law 3758/2009 on

    “Companies for informing debtors about overdue claims”,

stated the following for the information of consumers who suffer corresponding unbearable disturbances:

“The new provisions on the operation of companies informing debtors (debt collection companies) establish specific restrictions and introduce control mechanisms that strengthen the protection of the private sphere and respect for the personality of citizens against harassment practices. More specifically, the most important changes are the following:

(1) The companies may begin telephone communications for informing the debtor about an overdue claim after ten days have passed from the day on which it became overdue,

(2) a specific time schedule is set for communication with the debtor (09:00 to 20:00), limited only to working days,

(3) the communication is recorded and kept for one year in order to check violation of the law in the event of a complaint. The content of the recording may not be used against the debtor. The debtor is informed of the recording and its purpose

(with this provision Article 19 § 1 of the Constitution is bypassed and in substance abolished; that article protects the individual right to freedom of correspondence and communication and absolutely prohibits telephone interceptions, entrapments and blackmail. Especially professional blackmail),

(4) telecommunications service providers must provide, without charge, to the debtor or, after a complaint by the debtor, to the General Secretariat for Consumers, within ten days from the date of submission of the application, a statement with the relevant traffic data of the telephone connections as well as the identifying details of the holder of the telephone line from which the communication with the debtor was made, so that a complaint for violation of the law may be checked,

(5) the informing companies are obliged to keep an electronic file of telephone communications for information that they make to the debtor and to provide these data to the debtor or to the General Secretariat for Consumers when requested,

(6) the provisions for the protection of debtors apply not only to informing companies but also to the lenders themselves (for example, credit institutions) when they proceed with repeated information,

(7) apart from the informing company registered in the relevant register of the General Secretariat for Consumers, any other natural or legal person is prohibited from informing debtors,

8) the possibility of imposing sanctions is secured, among others also by the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, on all those who violate the provisions of the law, and not only on informing companies.

It is pointed out that, as to obligations 3, 4 and 5, the debtor informing companies must have complied with their observance within two months from publication of the law (that is, by 02.04.2012).

From now on, complaints by debtors about repeated telephone disturbances on the same day or on consecutive days, or about disturbances with misleading, threatening or any other unfair content, or disturbances that continue even when, for example, the debtor has resorted to justice (meaning: to the “judicial authority”) for settlement of his debts, will be capable of being checked in a feasible and effective way, the prescribed sanctions will be imposed on offenders, and observance of the legislation will be ensured. The citizen can now have substantive protection from whoever the unfair and misleading practice comes, whether it is a “debt collection company”, a credit body or any third party.

The General Secretariat for Consumers, from which consumers may request information and to which they may submit their complaints (telephone line 1520), now has, with the cooperation of the affected citizen, the necessary means of control and enforcement for the protection of consumers’ personal sphere against unfair collection harassment”.

Despite the above idyllic presentation of the way in which the so-called “debt collection companies” act (they should have been prohibited), the situation did not change, nor was any substantive improvement pursued.

The purpose was to create the communication impression that power supposedly cares about the fate of the oppressed debtors, whom it itself persecutes and wrongs.

In other words, state power, through these legislative regulations, wanted and managed to legalize the unlawful activity of companies of pressure, blackmail and intimidation and, at the same time, to suppress the intense protests caused by their unrestrained action.

If there had been true concern for wronged debtors, the activity of these companies would have been absolutely prohibited, since there was no provision of the Criminal Code and no rule of morality that they did not intentionally violate.

The employees of the euphemistically named “debt collection companies” (they are gangs or organizations of extortionists) are insolent, provocative and shameless.

They continue to threaten, insult, pressure and disturb the debtors of banking corporations, which have also exceeded every limit of tolerance. They reached the point of making “terminations” of loan agreements, demanding tens and hundreds of thousands of euros within suffocating deadlines of a few days.

These contracts are interpreted arbitrarily by the banks themselves, in violation of the law, serving extrajudicial “termination” documents through court bailiffs and by posting those documents on doors at homes and professional premises (in shops, offices, businesses, in the presence of their customers, so that the humiliation becomes more effective, as does the moral, social and professional damage to the recipients of the written terminations), even in August, during the judicial vacation, when the courts completely suspend their operation and judges, prosecutors and lawyers stop working.

The banks continue to break the law and are not deterred, in the absence of effective social reaction.

In perfect cooperation with their mandated debt collection companies (the companies of blackmail and oppression), they continue their work against debtors.

The unbearable harassment by the so-called debt collection companies (which were baptized “informing companies”) and by the banks has intensified.

However, the debtor can react to the disturbances, pressures, blackmail, threats and attacks by exercising all the rights granted to him by the Constitution, stressing that he is not to blame for the economic crisis, nor for his financial inability to satisfy the voracious banks, which, through methods (tricks), burden the debts with excessive, unreal, usurious and unlawful interest, without reducing the principal debt.

In other words, the debtor is never released from the debt unless he reacts, organizes and counterattacks, exposing the unlawful and antisocial activity both of the banks themselves and of the informing companies (the debt collection companies), demanding the definitive deletion of the debts, by making use, among other things, of Law 3869/2010, without limiting himself to “arrangements” and “settlements” with professional usurers.