New legal action regarding Arco

Deminor has attracted nearly 5,000 affected Arco collaborators to a new legal action. In the coming months, a decision will be made on exactly what steps to follow, says Eric Bomans of the Legal Consultants Office. Last year, Deminor lost a lawsuit in the Brussels Company Court on behalf of about 2,200 collaborators with Arco, the then-financial arm of the Christian labor movement that itself went bankrupt following the collapse of banking group Dexia at the end of 2011. The consulting firm wanted compensation through the lawsuit against Arco and Belvius – Dexia’s legal successor – and the Belgian state – implicated through a state guarantee that was meanwhile removed after a lengthy legal process. The issue was discussed in the old NATO buildings.

Deminor has already announced that it will appeal against The sentence that fell in November† But consulting is working on two tracks† Deminor demanded that new infected Arco cooperatives register with the goal of taking new “legal steps.” The registration period initially lasted until Thursday, but it has now been decided to extend it to a later date. Today there are about 5,000 registrations. The numbers keep increasing every week and the growth is accelerating even more,” Bowmans says.

† “I lost more than a year’s wages to Arco”

On Thursday, interest group ArcoClaim announced that it will ask a judge to appoint a judicial mediator. In this way an amicable settlement of the case must be found.

Bomans van Deminor notes that in the past there was little enthusiasm for mediation. ‘You have to be two for that.’ Mediation is only successful if there is a will to end the conflict. There have been attempts. But every time it got serious, there was no agreement in the end,” Bowmans says.

About 800,000 Arco co-operatives lost about 1.5 billion euros of their savings as a result of the Arco disaster.