The Executive Branch submitted to Parliament a serious and urgent bill referring to the start of the statute of limitations for the portfolios of the Ministry of Housing, the Mortgage Bank and the National Housing Agency.
The nationalist senator Carlos Camy explained that the Civil Code refers to prescription as a way of acquiring rights, such as a property that is in possession and its ownership is obtained through a judicial process; or also a way to extinguish rights when actions are lost over time, for example interest on a loan that after a certain time cannot be executed judicially. Prior to the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC), 30 years were established for real property acquisition rights, 10 years for personal debt collection actions, and five years to initiate legal actions for personal actions.”
But, article 467 of the LUC established a criterion for the beginning of the new shorter prescription term, of two years from the enactment of the Law, so it could happen that with the new terms many mortgages would be covered from the enactment of the law.
“The problem is that the LUC was enacted on July 9, 2020, that is, the established two-year term ended on July 9. According to what the authorities stated, at that date there are still some 5,000 mortgages that would be prescribed and would represent an amount of 50 million dollars. It is serious, because thousands of notifications should go out to debtors, which would create a kind of panic. The solution proposed in the project is an extension of 48 months from the enactment of the Law to exercise the actions that the Ministry, the BHU or the ANV have to assume,” explained Senator Camy.
The initiative was approved both in the Senate and in the Deputies, but generated controversy
Resignation
In this sense, the deputies of the Broad Front: Gustavo Olmos, Gabriela Otero and Cecilia Cairo gave a press conference in which they described the event as a situation of “laziness” on the part of the ANV.
“We are trying to fix a mess that the government has made, especially the ANV, not taking measures for two years to avoid losing 400 million dollars in mortgage loans, despite the repeated warnings made by the FA,” said Olmos.
In this sense, the FA legislators ask that the president of the National Housing Agency, Klaus Mill von Metzen; like the vice president, Gustavo Borsari, step aside.
For his part, Senator Mario Bergara from the Front referred to the unnecessary haste with which the LUC was legislated and the “absolute laziness of the National Housing Agency that generated the risk that the State would lose a million dollars, and that the authorities they could not quantify exactly between 50 and 400 million dollars”.
“Today we had to approve, also in a hurry, an extension of the term established by the LUC. The Broad Front acted responsibly, as it should, and contributed to avoiding these losses for the State and the possibilities of financing housing for the future”, remarked Bergara.
He noted that the performance of the ANV “was unpresentable, despite the fact that it had reports warning of the situation.”
“We question the continuity of the ANV president, given that he showed amazing ineptitude and does not give guarantees for a minimally reasonable management for the future,” Bergara stated.
