Enforced Collection of Claims

The National Bank of Serbia is obliged and authorized to perform enforced collection of claims by debiting any of the debtor’s accounts (dinar or foreign currency accounts), without the holder’s prior consent, based on executive order (from the tax, customs, court or other authorities), and payment orders (with regard to securities, bills and authorizations), in line with the prescribed order of priorities or the timing of receipt within the same order of priorities. As of September 30, 2005 the executive orders issued by the relevant authorities will be submitted to the relevant organizational units of Enforced Collection Department, whereas from October 1, 2005, such orders will be submitted to the Division for the Reception of Enforced Collection Liabilities and Orders in Kragujevac, Kragujevac, 16a Branka Radičevića Street.

Enforced collection of claims is executed pursuant to a number of regulations, the most important being: the Law on Payment Transactions, Law on Execution Proceedings, Law on Bankruptcy Proceedings, Law on Bills, and several by-laws – decisions and directives of the governor of the National Bank of Serbia.
Debtors that might undergo enforced collection are as follows:

• legal persons holding accounts with banks; 
• natural persons holding accounts with banks  and engaged in a particular activity; 
• banks holding accounts with the National Bank of Serbia.

Enforced collections are executed in dinars from any of the debtor’s accounts (either dinar or foreign currency account). In case when creditors are foreign natural and legal persons, the whole amount specified by the court is credited to the non-resident’s bank account in the dinar equivalent of the foreign currency debt.

Enforced collections are conducted in several phases:

• receipt and recording of decisions (I and II priority) and payment orders (III priority); 
• inspection of the legality of decisions and payment orders, which implies the return of illegal decisions and orders to the bearer; 
• entering decisions into the Program.

Decisions and payment orders are executed through exchange of e-mails between the Enforced Collections Department and banks, by preblocking (in case debtors are not blocked in the course of enforced collection) and blocking of the debtor’s personal identification number, which implies blocking of all  bank accounts held by the debtor and by imposing a ban on banks  from opening new accounts to such debtors