The recent conservatory seizures (temporary preventive measures to secure creditors’ rights) against state-owned enterprises are hardly unprecedented. Public entities have frequently employed this legal recourse against other state-run companies – a common yet problematic practice that now demands urgent regulatory reform.
Examples of common practice…
To give just one example, in February 2021, the Franco-Turkish operator TAV placed a seizure on Tunisair’s accounts, which was lifted a few days later.
“First of all, I would like to thank all those who have supported us over the last few days in this storm of accusations that my colleagues and I, and our respective families and friends, have had to endure following the seizures initiated by TAV Tunisie against Tunisair, Tunisair Handling and Tunisie Catering. This was in the absence of any possibility of dialogue with the Tunisair Group, in order to find common ground, in these oh so difficult times for everyone, to recover even a part of our debts, due for years, and to obtain the repayment of the rest, according to Tunisair’s capacities. Was that too much to ask?” said the former CEO of TAV at the time.
Usually carried out on the basis of a court judgment, this debt collection practice is becoming almost commonplace if we recall that in 2019 a private individual, impatient to pocket his dividends from a listed company, seized the accounts of a major listed group.
A foreign oil company had also obtained a “conservatory seizure” of around USD 6.5 million deposited in a bank account in the name of the Tunisian national oil company.
Also in 2021, the CNSS is said to have made a “conservatory seizure” on the accounts of a Tunisair catering subsidiary.
Private Tunisian banks have also suffered seizures by private Tunisian individuals. In 2019, a state-owned bank is said to have been seized by a private financial company for the shares it held in the capital of the former state-owned bank BFT.
A practice that must be better managed, for the good of the state and its reputation!
In other words, this is not the first time this has happened, and in fact, since the aforementioned revolution, it has become a common occurrence in the life of any society.
However, some magistrates have made confiscation a specialty and a way of making a living, even posting guards outside the headquarters of certain financial institutions in order to locate vehicles to be confiscated with the help of the police. It’s a method that borders on the disproportionate against institutions that are also defending their own interests and those of their public shareholder, the State.
And we don’t know how it is that the latest case of seizure against the largest of the public banks has risen to the top of the news agenda, despite the fact that it took place several months ago and that the courts recently ruled in favor of the public bank in question by suspending the execution of the seizure.
The public bank in question, it should be remembered, has deposited the sums in question pending the outcome of the dispute over the interpretation of interest.
However, one has to wonder about the modus operandi of this collection practice, which has become a well-organized show, when applied to a public bank.
It then becomes more of a modus operandi aimed at damaging the reputation of the public company and thus (one can also assume) that of the State as owner.
This is clearly the aim of the whole public spectacle, from the seizure of the bank’s CEO’s car to the sale at public auction of what appears to be a vehicle with the Ministry of Finance’s registration number, recognizable by its red number plate.
What’s more, it was seized with the help of another ministry, the Ministry of the Interior.
