Absa gets snot-klapped in Pretoria High Court by women's army

Posted 30 November 2014 Written by Ciaran Ryan
Category Banking
Absa's troubles in its mortgage division just got a whole lot worse. Barely two months after losing two similar cases in the South Gauteng High Court, Absa folded before throwing a punch in the Pretoria High Court against two sisters who made startling allegations of fraud and misconduct against the bank. 


Absa’s troubles with its mortgage division have just got a whole lot worse. On Friday two Johannesburg sisters, Emmarentia and Monica Liebenberg, travelled to the North Gauteng High Court with several angry Absa clients in support to defend an attempt by the bank to obtain summary judgment against them for allegedly defaulting on a mortgage loan taken out in 2007.

This should have been a cut and dried case for Absa, just another run-of-the-mill summary judgment like the thousands of others it gets awarded by the courts each year.

Then the bank ran into the Liebenberg sisters, represented by Advocate Christian Harms. The case was similar in many aspects to the case we reported on in August, when Absa attempted to obtain summary judgment against James Grobbelaar and Kevin Jenzen on the grounds that they had allegedly defaulted on their mortgage loans. When asked to provide evidence of the loan agreements, Absa produced blank loan agreements – not the ones signed by the defendants – claiming the originals were destroyed in a fire. Like Grobbelaar and Jenzen, the Liebenbergs argue that these were definitely not the agreements they had signed. (Judge Roland Sutherland dismissed Absa’s case in the South Gauteng High Court two months ago and referred the matter to trial, basing his decision on the disputes of fact and disputed terms contained in the so-called agreements. He further stated that the evidence has to be tested at trial and refused the bank's attempts to pursue summary judgment). 

Absa folds before throwing a punch

This time, facing the two Liebenberg sisters, Absa folded before throwing a punch. “Do you really want to fight this?” Adv Harms asked of the bank’s counsel, who promptly packed up his papers and abandoned the fight.

The case was over before it started. Just a few days previously, Absa’s attorneys dismissed the sisters’ heads of argument and 130-page affidavit as “gibberish.” The bank will rue its arrogance, because now the matter must go to trial (if the bank doesn’t settle before then) and the sisters will get to question Absa staff on how they managed to swear under oath on three different occasions – presenting multiple different and unsigned mortgage loan agreements before the court – that each was the correct one. They will also get to question the bank on the legality of the alleged bond agreement which, they argue in their affidavit before the court, is fraught with numerous frauds and violations of the law. 

 

The courts have tended to rubber-stamp these summary judgment applications from the banks, leading some legal experts to question whether South African courts are not just extensions of the banks


One wonders how the banks have been able to get away with this sort of nonsense for so long. The courts have tended to rubber-stamp these summary judgment applications from the banks, leading some legal experts to question whether South African courts are not just extensions of the banks. A summary judgment is one where there is supposedly no dispute of fact, and for this very reason is considered an extreme measure, not one to be lightly entertained by the courts. The very concept of fair justice demands that defendants be allowed to argue the charges brought against them. Yet hundreds, if not thousands, of such judgments are made by the courts each month, usually on behalf of the banks. Bank customers seldom question the bank’s accounting or the legality of their documents. That seems to be changing.

As one observer commented afterwards: “After this case, the gates of hell have just opened for Absa and the banks. The courts have been letting them get away with fraud and deception for so long, because they do not bother to look at the contracts that customers are being forced to sign.”

“Absa had tried to bully us into submission, by threatening legal costs and expenses and by pursuing a wrongful summary judgment application knowing full well the massive disputes involved. They wanted us to back off this case no matter what and even tried to strong-arm us but we refused and I believe they got the message now. We will see them at trial," say the sisters. 
 

After this case, the gates of hell have just opened for Absa and the banks. The courts have been letting them get away with fraud and deception for so long, because they do not bother to look at the contracts that customers are being forced to sign

 
In cases such as these, Absa typically relies on a so-called standard agreement, not the one signed by the customer, because it claims the originals were destroyed in a fire. Several Absa customers have attempted to investigate this fire, only to be brushed off with a press release (which the courts have unquestioningly accepted as evidence). Even if the hard copy originals were destroyed in a fire, the law requires banks to keep electronic copies. But even these are not available when requested because, some believe, the mortgage loans have been securitised (in other words, sold on to new owners). Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, just that you have to get the consent of the borrower. Hence the secrecy.

Here’s another aspect of the Liebenberg case that does not bode well for Absa: the sisters admit that they fell into arrears on their bond repayments, but when originally summonsed by the bank they offered to settle the R180,000 arrears claimed by the bank in full provided Absa withdrew the summons. No chance. Absa wanted the full amount outstanding of R661,000. What actually happened is that the sisters were paying what they thought was the required monthly repayment, but because the bank stopped sending monthly statements, they inadvertently fell into arrears, not realising that the monthly repayment amount had increased.

This looks like an innocent enough mistake, but Absa did what the banking manual says to do – call in the legal department. Then came the summons.

Bring in the legal team

What on earth was the bank thinking? The Liebenberg sisters decided at this point they better start putting up a more robust defense against the bank, which by now they reckoned to be beyond reason or compromise. Then they started to investigate the outstanding amount claimed by the bank. What they found shocked them: according to their affidavit, the bank not only inflated the interest rate, it also loaded additional charges and fees to which they had never agreed (and which are disallowed by law). In most of these cases, the bank gets some clerk to pull up a computer record as evidence of the amount outstanding and then attest by way of a sworn certificate of balance that this is the amount outstanding. South Africans are beginning to wake up to this by doing their own calculations, and the discrepancies can run into hundreds of thousands of rands. In some cases, the discrepancies are so large, customers are claiming the banks owe them (as in Damon Greville’s case against Sasfin).

There is another little legal technicality you may not know about, known as the “acceleration” clause. This allows the bank to claim the full amount outstanding in the event of a default. Just about every bond agreement has this clause. The problem is that this clause should be legally unenforceable because it relies on another document, the original loan agreement, which usually does not have this clause (again, that violates Section 90 of the National Credit Act). The sisters argued that Absa was only entitled to claim the arrears, and not the full amount of the loan. “We wonder how many thousands of people have lost their houses not knowing these legal technicalities,” says one obersver. 

Still to be tested in the courts is how these acceleration clauses stand up to Constitutional scrutiny, specifically Section 25 and 26 which protect property rights, bearing in mind that it is an actuarial certainty that borrowers will run into some financial difficulty at some point during the 20 year life of a mortgage bond. Should people be stripped of their primary asset – their home – after a single default? The Constitutional Court will likely get to decide this in the very near future.

Another point to bear in mind: nearly one in two South Africans have a bad credit rating. At 10% or 15% bad credit rating, one could argue that is the fault of the borrowers. At close to 50%, it is without doubt the fault of the banks (just look at African Bank, now under curatorship, extending new loans to pay old loans). The law has a term for this: reckless lending.
 

Nearly one in two South Africans have a bad credit rating. At 10% or 15% bad credit rating, one could argue that is the fault of the borrowers. At close to 50%, it is without doubt the fault of the banks


Here’s another strange aspect to the Liebenberg case. The sisters live in Johannesburg, so it seemed logical to set the matter down for hearing in the South Gauteng High Court (in Johannesburg). The matter was then mysteriously withdrawn by the bank and then – even more mysteriously – moved to the Pretoria court. This is in violation of the National Credit Act which stipulates that cases must be heard in the court with geographical jurisdiction – in this case, Johannesburg.

The sisters accused the bank of “forum shopping” by re-filing their case in Pretoria after withdrawing the original case from the Johannesburg court, “being aware of the additional cost implications to all parties and especially the respondents (the sisters), as well as additional inconvenience caused …due to distance.”

If the bank’s objective was to find a “soft” jurisdiction, it just got handed its head on a plate.

Months of waiting

“It took months of waiting. Absa’s attorney tried to get us to settle but we stuck it out like we warned them we would so that our voices could be heard. We could have easily settled this matter to save us the stress, but we discovered during our own fight that we are just one of thousands of people to whom this happens each year. These poor people don’t even know that they have been victims and most of them already lost their homes, not knowing that the bank is often bringing these applications to the courts illegally. We have evidence that this was done to many families with children, elderly people, single mothers and people who would never be able to afford legal assistance or knowledge to have found this if they had to fight this on their own. Many did not even try to fight back because they were told no-one wins against the banks. The result is that they lost everything they worked so hard for. These people lost their homes to a bank without a conscience,” said the sisters after the case.   

Some years ago Absa boasted that it financed one in three homes in South Africa. Considering that more than 10,000 homes are repossessed in South Africa each year, it’s safe to assume that Absa is responsible for the biggest share of this. Bear in mind also that these homes are sold at auction, usually for a fraction of their value. The bank then comes after the defaulting borrower for the shortfall. The legality of this is about to be tested in court.

The bank, under CEO Maria Ramos, has been trying to rebuild the bank's image after losing more than one million retail and several thousand business clients in 2013. Barclays, which is the majority shareholder in Absa, has been embroiled in several international scandals and hit with multi-million dollar fines for their questionable dealings around the globe. In a memo sent to their staff worldwide, Barclays PLC’s chief executive Anthony Jenkins stated: “I will not tolerate any circumstances in which our clients are lied to or misled and any instances I discover will be dealt with severely. The success of our business depends crucially on our clients being able to rely absolutely on our honesty and integrity."

No doubt Jenkins will now be looking to put heads on pikes in Absa Bank's mortgage and legal departments, as he promised he would. 

The Liebenberg sisters and a group of friends assisted by researchers, attorneys, advocates and others have now set up a support group to help others fight their cases with the banks: “People who end up in this situation usually are desperate. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know court rules or legislation, and more importantly they usually trust their bank not thinking there might be foul play. Most people don’t have money to fight these court cases. It is true when they say the law only protects either the very rich or the very poor. We were forced to fight the majority of this case on our own and we truly struggled to get attorneys to even keep their doors from closing in our faces, much less listen to us when we told them we were fighting the bank. As we demonstrated today however, the bank customer does have rights and they need to know what these rights are and they should not be scared to fight back. Those that need help can now contact the support group,” says Emmarentia Liebenberg.

The famous Absa fires
 
“Absa claims that just about every home loan agreement signed prior to 2009 has been destroyed in the fire at the Docu-file storage facility. I think every Absa home loan customer should phone their bank immediately and ask for a copy of their mortgage contract. See what the bank says. They will probably be told these documents were destroyed in a fire. That is not an excuse. The bank must then produce the electronic copy. Don’t just re-sign any old agreement they ask you to sign either. Make sure first that it was definitely the same agreement with the same terms therein which you had originally agreed on. People need to start demanding that banks deliver these contracts and keep their copies safe because false agreements are currently being used to bring bogus legal claims which steal the assets of ordinary South Africans daily. This is enough! The injustice stops here,” says one of the members of the support group that has been set up after this case.
 
 
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