Brits win back £1.3m from spanish bank

The Finca Parcs site in 2007 (Photo credit: Finca Parcs Action Group)

Father-of-two Keith Rule was one of several buyers who invested in the Finca Parcs development in Hellin in 2006, but the project was suspended due to the recession. With no bank guarantee on his deposit of £45,983 from Spanish savings bank CAM, despite it being required by Law 57/68, Rule found himself with no way of retrieving his money.

Rule and 46 other buyers formed the Finca Parcs Action Group in 2009 after the project was abandoned by its developer, taking legal action against Cleyton and CAM last year. The group won an initial trial against the group in May 2012 and then an appeal the following March.

Only a few of the 617 three- and four-bed homes were partially completed in the luxury development - far from the first time a project has been stuck in limbo, or scrapped altogether, during the global financial crisis. Even celebrities such as Andre Agassi saw their money disappear in a US project in 2008. Burned buyers only serve to add to the air of caution surrounding overseas property investment during an uncertain economic climate. But Keith Rule’s case has been hailed as a source of hope for buyers.

The determined 46 year old found a law almost as old as he was that made them jointly responsible with the project’s promoted for returning deposits - even without the deposit guarantee certificates.

Rule’s victory, along with the other buyers, has won back almost £1.3 million from the bank - a success that impressed his lawyers, to the point where they have now hired him on a part-time basis.

Alongside his day job, Rule now helps to prepare case files for other Brits in similarly sticky legal situations. The Finca Parcs group, meanwhile, are applying to reclaim costs for the case as well as the interest on their deposits.

“At the start of this fight people called me crazy but they don’t now and I’m delighted to have given hope to other Brits,” he told The Daily Mail. “There was no concept five years ago in Spain banks could be liable in these sorts of situations. We’ve created case law here.”

“I haven’t got a magic wand I can wave for everything,” added Rule, “but my message to people in the situation I was in is ‘Don’t give up.’ I’m living proof you can take on powerful institutions and beat them when they’re wrong and you’re right.”