The Vitebsk Region Economic Court has created social media accounts to find debtors

The Vitebsk Regional Economic Court has created its accounts on popular social networks to search for debtors in enforcement proceedings, the court told a BELTA correspondent.

Enforcement officers of the Vitebsk Regional Economic Court continue to implement modern methods of debt collection from unscrupulous debtors. Having mastered sending SMS messages about compulsory debt collection to debtors' subscriber numbers, they decided to use the capabilities of the Internet to influence malicious non-payers. Through the created accounts, enforcement officers send messages about outstanding debts in enforcement proceedings, inform debtors about the amount of debt, as well as about the initiation of enforcement proceedings against them.

In the practice of the Economic Court, there have been situations more than once when a debtor did not pay off the debt under an enforcement proceeding and hid from enforcement officers. At the same time, he regularly posted photos from vacation or next to his expensive car on his social media pages, which allows us to form an idea of the debtor's property status, his approximate income level, and the availability of vehicles.

An amusing case occurred as a result of work on one enforcement proceeding. It was established that the debtor does not live at the address indicated in the enforcement document, has no property registered in his name, and has no official place of employment. In this case, the bailiff could have returned the enforcement document to the claimant with an act on the impossibility of debt recovery. However, he found the debtor on a social network. The debtor's page featured photos from a recent vacation in Turkey, which indirectly indicated his solvency. The bailiff posted a public notice about the existence of the debt in the Economic Court of the Vitebsk Region on the wall of the debtor's personal page. And this had an effect – the debtor contacted the bailiff and paid the debt in full. As noted in the court, even a simple notification to the debtor via the website about the initiation of enforcement proceedings against him often encourages debt payment.

Non-standard approaches to collecting information about debtors and their property yield results. In 2012, the Department of Enforcement of Court Decisions initiated almost 11.6 thousand enforcement proceedings, which is 26% more than in the previous year. Over 8.3 thousand proceedings were actually executed for a total amount of over Br242 billion, 12 million Russian rubles, $1.5 million, and 60 thousand euros.