Leaders of the Franak association which represents people with Swiss franc-indexed bank loans called on Friday all members of the group to launch private lawsuits against banks who had issued the loans, which they said might cause the banks to lose 10-15 billion kuna (€1.35-2 billion), unless settlements with debtors are agreed.

They said this in a news conference organised in response to the High Commercial Court ruling on Thursday, in which the court confirmed an earlier lower court verdict which had annulled foreign currency-indexed clauses and interest rate changes in loan contracts. The ruling was part of a class action lawsuit against eight banks.

A member of the association, Denis Smajo, said that the verdict meant that the justice system has passed “the highest test,” even though the process “took a while.”

“For an association with 30,000 members this is huge. We have beaten the currency clause, the interest rate, there may be some legal dilemmas left to solve, but we will see that through, too,” Smajo said.

He added that even though banks could file an appeal, the matter has practically been solved earlier at the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, and the Court of the EU, who had all backed consumers in the dispute. Smajo suggested that all Croatians with loans indexed in Swiss francs should join the Franak association, where their legal team could give them advice whether they should launch individual lawsuits against banks.

However, he did not reject the possibility of reaching a settlement with the banks.

“If I was a banker, I’d try to go for a settlement, because this is a huge amount of money that banks stand to lose, especially if you want to save the arrears and avoid paying for court costs. However, banks being banks, they had no interest in doing that, they tried using the legal means available to them, and it could backfire now,” Smajo said.

He added that the total cost to banks might be 10-15 billion kuna (€1.35 billion-€2 billion), although, he said, the amount could increase due to arrears.

The subject of the dispute are some 120,000 loans indexed to the Swiss franc, which had been issued to consumers between 2004 and 2008. This includes around 53,000 loans that had since been converted and indexed to euro or kuna.

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