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Cape Town - The court will be approached for a declaratory order on whether the more than 80 mortgage loans banks granted low-income Air Force members amounted to reckless lending.
Michael Lombard, a Pretoria attorney specialising in the National Credit Act and associated with debt-management firm Debt End, said that he had been instructed to lodge an application on behalf of the group in the Pretoria High Court.
The application is expected to be submitted this week.
Lombard says if the court finds that the credit grantor had acted recklessly, the agreement could be wholly or partially nullified.
According to Lombard, an application such as this would be lodged in terms of the National Credit Act, which prescribes certain steps that need to be followed by a credit grantor before advancing credit.
These include taking due consideration of a client's ability to pay and ascertaining that the client fully understands the risks and costs of the indebtedness, as well as the rights and duties relating to the credit agreement.
Sake24 has previously reported on the more than 30 Air Force members who received 88 mortgage loans from four banks in an alleged property scam. The scheme's wheels came off when its promoter could no longer pay the mortgage instalments on behalf of the group, as had ostensibly been agreed.
The Air Force members are now saddled with R35m-odd in debt that they are unable to repay.
The applications for the loans were submitted to the banks by a bond originator. The Air Force members were under the impression that the bond originator had an agreement with the banks to get the loans approved.
On Monday the Air Force members lodged complaints with the banking ombudsman. The credit regulator is already conducting an investigation.
A complaint of alleged document fraud by the JV Advanced and CH Bond Originating companies owned by Jonathan Vreugdenburg and his mother, Christine Harrod, was handed in at the police's commercial branch.
This apparently alleges that the bond originator tampered with the participants' mortgage applications, which Vreugdenburg last week denied.
- Sake24.com
For more business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com.