What I tell you in the lines that follow is not a Chinese tale. Unfortunately it is the pure reality of how a financial institution has worked.
There was a Savings Bank, now disappeared as a result of the good work of its managers and incorporated into a bank of those that remain in the Spanish panorama through the successive processes of merger and bank restructuring that had a unique way of acting in what was refers to the cancellation of their mortgages.
They must have thought that the banking business existed until its last consequences and that it had a kind of right of seigneur, for any action that they had to carry out in terms of mortgage loans.
It consisted of the following. Once a person managed to pay their mortgage loan and wanted to cancel their mortgage, the answer was that they had to leave a provision of funds for a large amount, to assume the cancellation costs, commonly called Notary fees. If you did not enter the system, there was no formula to cancel the mortgage.
To avoid there being wayward bank personnel who bypassed the system, they even removed, from the faculties that are usual in the powers of bank employees, that of canceling mortgages, which were concentrated in intermediate and/or higher management of the entity , zone or provincial heads type.
The system was especially perverse in those cases in which a person sold a home, and paid the remaining amount of the mortgage loan with the amount received, because for that savings bank, the system was still in force, so that against receipt of the money, the representative of the aforementioned box did not grant a deed of payment letter, which is the usual practice, but rather delivered an internal document as proof of payment, (administrative is called in banking terminology), which is contrary to the principles of loyalty that should govern the relationship between financial entities.
What is this whole system hiding? Well, very simple, a game of commissions. All the mortgage cancellation deeds of that entity were concentrated in a few notaries, to whom the box charged a commission, for bringing them the deeds; and all the deeds were managed through a single agency that belonged to its own fund, which charged fees well above the market value for such actions, thus imposing unsolicited services on those who requested the cancellation of their mortgages.
The system was more or less hidden when mortgage cancellations accrued the documented legal act tax, since with the cost of the tax it was easy to cover up the other expenses. It began to go bankrupt when the tax disappeared, and it really exploded when the notarial and registration fees were enormously reduced in terms of mortgage cancellation, since the canceling notaries, with such prices, did not cover the payment of the commission that the entity charged them for taking them. deeds of cancellation of mortgage.
Is the performance of that box legal? In my opinion, the performance oozes illegality and immorality everywhere. But, I'm tired to make an assessment, since I just wanted to state the facts.
