Banja Luka’s “UniCredit Bank” is obliged to pay 256 million marks in compensation to the company “Bitminer Factory” from Gradiška due to the omission that led to the failure of the project for the production of cryptocurrencies in Gradiška, Capital has learned.

This is the epilogue of the largest cryptocurrency dispute in Europe, which was conducted before the District Commercial Court in Banja Luka, and which lasted a little less than two and a half years.

Both parties have the right to appeal this verdict.

The company from Gradiška had a plan to produce electricity through renewable energy sources, which would be partly sold to a partner company for cryptocurrency mining, while part would go to the electricity network.

For that, they needed investors that they attracted by issuing digital tokens in exchange for money collected through an account opened in “UniCredit Bank” in Banja Luka.

However, as soon as the payments started to arrive, the bank decided to return them, justifying that it could not do business with companies that deal with cryptocurrencies.

As the entire project was founded and imported through Blockchain technology, there was no time and space to open new accounts, so the project was doomed from the start.

The court states in the verdict that the bank did not prove that any act prescribed a ban on entering into business relations with clients dealing with cryptocurrencies.

No act of the defendant, and this primarily refers to the contracts on opening accounts and general business conditions, did not prescribe a ban, nor was it proven that there is any ban on the defendant’s business with persons dealing with cryptocurrencies in any way, so the court cannot accept these claims.

Also, the evidence conducted during the procedure shows that the plaintiff did not trade cryptocurrencies or activities related to cryptocurrencies, but collected funds in order to implement the project of investing in renewable energy sources and investing in hardware equipment – Judge Igor Dabic explained in the verdict.

It adds that the bank behaved unprofessionally in this case because it first allowed “Bitminer Factory” to open an account and then unilaterally terminated the contract and return the payments.

The conduct of the defendant(Unicredit) was in no way in accordance with good banking practice, especially in this particular case when the possibility of damage or detrimental consequences for the plaintiff’s business and the project itself was made clear.

The actions of the defendant, primarily by refusing payments and returning the paid funds to the payers without notifying the plaintiff, then unilaterally terminating the contract led to the suspension of the project, which led to the impossibility of realizing the business plan.

Revolutionary verdict

The legal representative of the company from Gradiška, Aleksandar Sajić, assesses the verdict as revolutionary and very important for the entire region and all those whose business is based on cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology because it introduces a kind of legal framework for the future.

He points out that the court itself made a huge effort to understand this because it is a new activity and industry, but that in the end, it succeeded.

We started from the reason that is benign, and that is the cancellation of the Agreement on opening a business account, but the bank did it carelessly because it collapsed the whole project for the simple reason that projects related to Blockchain technologies are made in such a way that they cannot be changed. That is why they are of great importance in modern society and the economy because they provide security for every participant in the process – said Sajić.

Lawyer Jovan Čizmović, who represented “Unicredit Bank” in this procedure, said that he had no comments because he had not seen the verdict yet.