Andre in Chile

I have been way to quiet here even though so much has happened. We found a house, we bought it… moved in on April 1st. We found a dog, didn’t find his owners and trained him – more on all these topics later.

The topic that moves me since 6 months is the story that always leads me to a Writer’s block but today I will try again. The text that comes might be unstructured and hard to understand but I need to start getting it of my chest.

But before I start with the story here are some bullet points:

A small-sized Austrian Bank (240 employees according to their website) Volksbank-Tirol Innsbruck Schwaz AG took EUR 24,000.00 from my fathers personal Pensions Account. –> In my opinion this was theft * –> more on that later

• Before taking the money they froze my father’s account – he had about EUR 30,000.00 on it and was just in Chile on holiday
• The freezing and “theft” happened at a time (Christmas 2009) when my wife and I urgently needed EUR 28,000 to be able to purchase our home. Our financing plan would have not been possible without a personal loan of my father (non of us had the permanent residency in Chile and without that you don’t usually get a mortgage here in Chile).
• From the date we knew that we could not count on this money (which my father purposely had left on this account to loan to us) we had 1 month time to find the money elsewhere with the added difficulty that my wife and me were outside of Chile and my parents were also still traveling.
• The Bank (Volksbank-Tirol) has still not returned the money –> even though the Managing Director and two more Directors were contacted by us and have been informed by journalists (who are doing research and are planning to write the story)

What lead Volksbank-Tirol to this action?

My dad once owned a company. He had this company since he was about 17 or 18 years of age and ran it pretty well without big debts with good years and bad years but he always made sure to pay his staff and companies he owed money with no delay.

He gave this company to my brother who at first did a good job in growing the business, doubling revenue and winning big international projects. Important to note is that my dad made clear that he will NOT be a guarantor. He did not sign anything related to guaranteeing when he signed over the company . Then came the financial crisis. My brother had to finance some pretty big projects and his customers were paying later and later. That is usually the time when you need banks –> He went to the Head Quarters of Volksbank-Tirol but they would not extend the credit line. My brother went to other banks who also refused to extend credit.

My brother spoke to all his creditors most of whom understood the situation and who were willing to settle to receive a percentage of what my brother owed them. But not the above mentioned bank. My brother went to a meeting with them. The meeting did not go well. They right away said they would not accept any settlement offer and after a while a female employee from Volksbank-Tirol started smiling and mentioned they had discovered that there was a way they could get to the money of my father. My brother mentioned it to me when but my father was on holiday and we both saw no need to tell him since we first assumed it was bogus and secondly knew that to take money from my father they would first have to go to court and secondly win at court (which in our minds and in the mind of my brothers lawyer was highly unlikely).

Now what did the bank do instead of going to court and trying to win a court case. They just decided to lock down my father’s account after he transferred EUR 28,000.00 to me in Chile. The EUR 28,000 never left the bank. They left my dads account but were later returned (minus EUR 20,00 of fees which were never refunded). Remember even though the EUR 28,000 were returned he had no access to them since his account was on lock down. His Card would not work nor could he transfer money. The bank took EUR 24,000 of the account before unblocking it.

My dad and me both thought the transfer went through (since there was no error message and the money left his account). My dad who was in Santiago at the time of the transfer went down to Pucon (780 km to the south of Santiago, Chile) with his wife and his cash card. He noticed that he no longer received money from the cash machine but thought this was the spotty cash machine service I once had spoken about. –> Can you imagine having EUR 30,000 on your account and not being able to access it because the bank decided that it would like some of that money?

I will pause here since the post is already getting too long but will do several follow-up posts. I also plan to start a blog in German since the bank is in Austria and also plan on doing a series of 2 minute videos describing every part of this case.

What is to come in follow-up posts?

• How Volksbank-Tirol blocked my brothers children’s savings accounts for more than 3 months and threatened to seize the money.
• How the bank threatened to sue me and my father
• How Volksbank-Tirol accused me of defraud
• How the bank (in my opinion) broke professional secrecy *
• My dads lawyers opinion on the case

*Disclaimer although my dad and my brother have spoken to three different lawyers who pretty much had similar opinions I am speaking for myself with this blog article and want to make you aware that when mentioning words like theft and breach of professional secrecy that this is my opinion –> Courts may decide differently.