Do loans without the influence of public authorities go into oblivion?
According to the current positive legal framework of the Republic of Serbia, the Loan Agreement is an informal legal transaction. The above means that the loan can be made valid even without any written contract, on which the contracting parties would put their signatures or even have them certified by a notary public. Certainly, by drawing up a written contract that the contracting parties would sign, the lender increases the degree of security in terms of proving the fact that the loan in question really did, while the borrower also has a certain benefit in terms of easier proof of the terms of the loan received and the amount of money he received for the loan. The level of security of the contracting parties is additionally enhanced by the possibility, not the obligation of the parties, to have their signatures on the contract certified by a competent public notary, which removes the uncertainty in terms of challenging the authenticity of the signature of the contracting party on a written document called the Loan Agreement.
As we can see, our law leaves the responsibility for the degree of certainty regarding the fate of the loan as a legal transaction, to the contracting parties themselves, who can choose between three options: 1) an oral loan agreement, 2) a written loan agreement and 3) a written agreement about the loan with certified signatures by a notary public.
However, according to the proposed amendments to the Law on Public Notaries recently adopted by the Government of the Republic of Serbia, a mandatory form of loan agreement is introduced – the form of a solemnized document (that is, a contract certified by a notary public), which form will condition legal validity from the date of entry into force of the announced changes. loan agreements concluded between natural persons, if the value of the loan is greater than EUR 10,000.00.
In addition to the above, the aforementioned amendments to the positive legal framework also plan to introduce a special register of loan contracts, which would be used for the purpose of preventing and controlling money laundering and terrorist financing. In order to achieve the stated goal, the acting public notary who would solemnize the aforementioned Loan Agreement would have the obligation to submit a specific Loan Agreement to the Directorate for the Prevention of Money Laundering with all the data of the contracting parties, the amount and conditions of the loan.
