300 families in Czechia whose houses have been destroyed by a tornado, may have to give financial help they have received to bailiffs
5. 7. 2021 / Jan Čulík
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It has now become evident that around 300 families living in the destroyed villages are heavily in debt and as a result, they are victims of private bailiffs that operate in the Czech Republic. It now transpires that much of the financial help, provided for these families whose dwellings have been damaged or destroyed, may be confiscated by bailiffs, says Czech public service radio.
Every tenth Czech citizen has had their personal income blocked by bailiffs and private debt collectors. 863 000 people are thus totally excluded from the regular economic life of Czech society.
Here is a map of the most affected regions by the activity of bailiffs:
The problem is that in 2001, the Czech state created a system of private bailiffs who have been earning large amounts of money by extorting payments from indebted citizens.
For many years, indebtedness usually started from a small debt of the equivalent of a few euros about which the creditors would not inform the debtor, but they would pass it to a private debt collector. The private debt collectors would wait for several years until they pounced. The Czech law allowed them to hike up the debt by exorbitant debt collecting charges, so that a debt of say the equivalent of 20 euros grew to tens of thousands of euros or more - and you could lose your house.
You did not learn that you had become a victim of a debt collector until the bank told you that your personal bank account and all the money that you had in it had been officially blocked - until you pay your outstanding debt - which you naturally could not pay because your bank account had been blocked.
Thus almost a million Czech citizens find themselves outside the official economy. Most of their income is confiscated by bailiffs in order to pay the exorbitant fees of private debt collectors. Since the victim knows that they will never free himself of debt, he starts operating in the black economy, accepting informal payments for his work in cash only - if they can.
Some minor improvements have been made to the system recently nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of people are still being exploited by bailiffs.
As the Observer newspaper explained some time ago:
Critics say lives are being scarred by a punitive debt-collecting system that has no parallel in western Europe – with local transport authorities and public utilities selling small unpaid debts to private collecting agencies at a huge mark-up. That often leads to modest sums being multiplied to thousands of pounds once late-payment sanctions and fees for lawyers and bailiffs are added. Some debtors borrow money to pay off the demands and fall into secondary debt.
“My girlfriend and I were each fined 800 koruna (£28) when we were caught on the tram without a ticket in 2006,” said Sam Kahakzad, 32, a television producer from Prague. “We had no money, so couldn’t pay on the spot. We didn’t hear anything else until 2011, when we got letters demanding 28,000 koruna (£977) and warning we would be fined 10,000 koruna (£349) if we didn’t pay within a month. I had to make two emergency payments from my salary.”
In one instance, a debt officially quoted at 3.5p for the electricity company Bohemia Energy soared to more than £733 after costs.
Debt collectors also raid people's homes and confiscate their belongings.
Czech politicians tolerate this abuse - because many of them participate in this parasitical business.
Spokeperson of the Czech Parliament, Radek Vondráček of the ruling ANO party of Andrej Babiš, which has recently blocked several attempts at reforming the enforcement laws, has just been reported to have been providing legal services to the group of small consumer lenders and debt collectors some of whom were linked to convicted criminals. Vondracek does not see anything controversial about his extra-political activities in “law counseling”.
Hundreds of children in the Czech Republic have been persecuted by bailiffs.
Although activists have been trying to persuade politicans to do away with this abuse, so far it has not happened. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš supports the bailiff business.
Radek Hábl, an anti-debt slavery activist, explains the issue in this TV interview. English subtitles:Dětské #exekuce?
— daniel hule (@DanielHule) July 2, 2021
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More information:
The reasons for frustration: A large number of Czech citizens are being destroyed by a parasitical bailiff industry
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