The total value of debts owed to courts exceeded PLN 754 million at the end of May, according to the InfoDług Report published by BIG InfoMonitor.
“Debts of people who do not want to pay court fees or comply with judgments began to appear in debtors’ registers after the amendment of the Penal Code in 2015. This was due to the growing problem of convicts avoiding paying fines. it was facilitated by a special platform for introducing debts launched in 2017. As a result, when at the end of 2017 there were 71.5 thousand people in the BIG InfoMonitor Debtors Register with arrears exceeding PLN 190 million, there are currently more than twice as many debtors, and the amount of arrears increased even more, to PLN 754.1 million, ” according to the report.
Most debtors are reported due to unpaid fines, 125,700 people. They have almost 174,000 to settle in fines with an average value of PLN 1,715 each, with a total of over PLN 298 million. The second most frequently unpaid liability is court costs.
“Another reason for reporting debtors to the register by the courts are unpaid tax exemptions to the State Treasury. They are adjudicated in situations where the forfeiture of objects derived from crime is disproportionate to the seriousness of the committed act. 698 people were reported on this basis and their arrears amount to more than PLN 3.8 million. The smallest number of people (282) are listed in the BIG InfoMonitor debtors register due to failure to settle public order penalties, which can be obtained, for example, for speaking without the court’s permission or using unparalleled vocabulary in the courtroom,” the report stated.
The largest amounts of receivables not recovered by the courts are the amounts from the unfulfilled judgments regarding the return of criminal property – this applies to property worth approximately PLN 377 million.
“The statistics would have been even higher if it had not been for the fact that many court debtors, after they enter the register, convince themselves to settle their liabilities. From the beginning of reporting debts by the courts, hundreds of millions of zlotys have been withdrawn from the register. Our analyzes show that the majority of recovered by the courts, the receivables were credited to their account in the first three months from the debtor’s notification,” summarized the president of BIG InfoMonitor, Sławomir Grzelczak, quoted in the report.
Source: BIG InfoMonitor and ISBnews
