The Supreme Court puts a stop to the seizure of accounts to collect municipal fines

The Supreme Court has put a stop to the seizure of bank accounts carried out by municipalities to collect fines, mainly traffic fines.

From now on, no municipality can carry out and issue proceedings to seize money in accounts opened in branches of financial entities located outside its municipal area.

And if you think you have to do it, you will have to ask for help from bodies of the autonomous community or the State.

The high court thus dismisses an appeal from the Madrid City Council, which seized more than 2,000 euros from a Toledo resident with an account in the Castilian-La Mancha capital and who accumulated 22 traffic fines.

He did it simply by going to a computerized executive collection system.

The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court has established this criterion, which was already established by another Madrid court in the same branch of law, which also ruled in favor of the fined party and overruled the Madrid council.

Then it was already established that the Madrid City Council did not have powers to seize outside its territory and that, by doing so, it violated article 8.3 of the Law Regulating Local Treasury.

This specifies that the actions regarding inspection or executive collection (when the voluntary payment period has already passed) that must be carried out outside the territory of the respective local entity "will be carried out by the competent bodies of the corresponding autonomous community when they must be carried out within the territorial scope of the latter, and by the competent bodies of the State in other cases, upon request of the president of the corporation.”

The Madrid City Council claimed at the time that it did not have to carry out any action outside its own territory, since it was enough to “introduce the requirement in a centralized system to execute embargoes on bank accounts to which the bank was attached, in whose Toledo branch “The debtor had the account.”

In fact, this position and this procedure were endorsed by the Municipal Economic-Administrative Court of Madrid, a body whose members are elected precisely by the municipal plenary session.

In this way he managed to collect the debt of 2,028.06 euros

The Supreme Court now agrees with the multiple offender and highlights that the municipal administration cannot carry out and issue proceedings to seize money in accounts opened in branches of financial entities located outside the limits of the seizing town hall, “even when said seizure does not require carrying out material of actions outside the aforementioned municipal territory by the local administration.”

The Supreme Court explains: “When executive collection actions by a city council must be carried out outside its territory, said local entity is legally unable to exercise them.”