Electronic seizures of bank account balances of inconsistent debtors will also be imposed by the municipalities throughout the country, applying the express procedures already foreseen and adopted some years ago by the AADE tax collection services.
This possibility is provided to municipalities by a recently announced bill from the Ministry of the Interior, which is set to be voted on in Parliament in the coming weeks. Essentially, the collection services of municipalities will be called upon to operate, just as the tax collection services of the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) have been operating for a long time. They will be required to request mortgage foreclosures from banks via electronic applications. deposits their debtors. For their part, the banks should respond immediately to the municipalities’ requests, carrying out the confiscations and returning the confiscated amounts to the municipalities.
With this new electronic confiscation process, municipalities will be able to collect more quickly the accumulated overdue debts of unpaid amounts of municipal fees and fines, which they assign to their citizens, and especially the most difficult in terms of the process of collecting fines for violations on various abuses and violations of citizens for illegal parking.
In particular, Article 32 of the draft law of the Ministry of the Interior “Provisions relating to land border posts, the strengthening of Local Autonomous Organisations and other provisions”, recently put out for public consultation, specifically provides for the implementation by the collection services of municipalities of electronic attachment processes of debtors’ credits that are held by banking institutions.
This procedure is provided for in article 32 of the Public Revenue Collection Code (law 4,978/2022) for debts due to the State. According to this procedure:
- The notification of the confiscation by the State to the bank, as well as the notification of the bank statement on the value of the deposits held by the State debtor, are carried out through single electronic connection and communication transit centers, which are securely connected to each other and are jointly defined by the State and all credit institutions established in the country, represented by the Hellenic Banking Association or the Cooperative Banking Association or other persons, as the case may be.
- Notification of the seizure to the bank is considered to have been made on the date and time of sending the electronic confirmation of its receipt by the credit institution, through the transit node declared by it.
- The service of the credit institution’s statement on the debtor’s deposit balance is considered completed on the date and time of sending the electronic confirmation of receipt, through the transit node declared by the State.
- The above certificates have an advanced electronic signature or are encrypted and have an electronic signature from their server. The passage of data through the above-mentioned transit centers is excluded from the application of the provisions on banking secrecy, since they are applicable punctually.
- After the banks have frozen and confiscated the amounts recorded in the electronic seizure of the accounts of the State debtors, they return the seized amounts to the State account held at the Bank of Greece or to the agency that imposed the seizure within ten (10) days from the presentation of the statement from the credit institution.
The procedure described above will also be followed by municipalities, as per article 32 of the draft law under consultation. This article provides, in particular, that especially for the activation and implementation of this procedure by municipalities, the power provided for in the Public Revenue Collection Code to the Governor of AADE, with regard to debts to Municipalities, will be exercised by the head of the General Directorate of Local Government Finance and Development Policy of the Ministry of the Interior.
Responsibilities of the Director General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs
In other words, the Director General of the Ministry of the Interior acquires the following powers:
- Determine, by its decision, the single transit centers and the process of their notification by the stakeholders (municipalities and banks), the mandatory content of the notified seizures, their removal and limitation and the declarations submitted, as well as their terms of identification, their sending and receiving deadlines, security terms and conditions and any other details necessary for the implementation of the process in question.
- Send electronically to all banks in the country the data of municipal debtors with a total outstanding debt exceeding 70 thousand euros. Banks are required to take the necessary measures on the same day to freeze the money found or deposited in the accounts of these debtors, up to the amount of the total debt. After the seizure and within 2 (two) days, each competent municipality, which must impose the seizure, will be informed of the amount of the amount seized, within a maximum period of 5 (five) business days from the electronic receipt of the informative response, otherwise, the credit institution will immediately eliminate the imposed commitment.
- Determine by decision the competent body for collecting and sending the data, pursuant to paragraph 2, as well as any other details necessary for its implementation. The amount of the debt referred to in paragraph 2 may be changed by similar decision.