Andorra Court Annuls €5.74M Loan Repayment Orders Against Businessman Loan Fité

Andorra's Superior Court of Justice has annulled multiple lower court decisions ordering businessman Josep Maria Loan Fité to repay approximately €5.74 million in outstanding loan balances, due to a series of procedural irregularities that left his representatives unable to mount an effective defence.

The civil chamber delivered its ruling on 9 October, overturning the Tribunal de Batlles' September 2025 judgment that required Loan Fité to pay Pleyade 21 a total of €5,735,225.29, plus interest and costs. This sum stemmed from four loans originally granted by Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) between 2007 and 2013, which Vall Banc acquired after BPA's nationalisation and pursued for early repayment in 2018.

The dispute traces back to a 2023 Tribunal de Batlles ruling in Vall Banc's favour, which imposed a €5.6 million liability. The Superior Court voided that in April 2025, citing inadequate evidence of the credits' transfer to Pleyade 21. A revised lower court decision followed in September 2025, but the higher court has now nullified it along with related procedural steps.

Central flaws included the Tribunal de Batlles granting Pleyade 21 procedural succession to Vall Banc without prior access to documents for Loan Fité's judicial administrator, preventing challenges to the credits' ownership. Loan Fité, declared bankrupt personally, is represented by this administrator alongside his prior counsel.

Further issues encompassed dismissing reform requests on credit ownership, contract terms, and possible prescription periods; rejecting Pleyade 21's initial withdrawal attempt before succession was settled; and issuing the merits judgment before resolving prior reform motions. Those motions remained unaddressed on substance until January 2026 auto decrees, which dismissed them as moot after the appeal, rendering the process ineffective.

The ruling, penned by magistrate Immaculada Rodríguez, stresses that nullity requires breaching an essential procedural norm leading to material defencelessness, not mere formality. It highlights omitted hearing steps violating the contradiction principle, which barred scrutiny of Pleyade 21's subrogation documentation—a prerequisite for its standing.

Background to the succession involves Vall Banc's sale to Crèdit Andorrà, which offloaded "bad assets" like these litigious credits to Pleyade 21, a JC Flowers vehicle. Defence claims question the transfer's validity, noting Vall Banc had previously acknowledged some credits belonged to a now-defunct investment fund.

The court returned proceedings to the pre-succession stage for rehearing defence arguments, re-evaluating succession, and addressing the withdrawal request. It explicitly rejected defence allegations of Tribunal de Batlles bias, attributing flaws to procedural errors, not partiality.

The decision erases the judgments but leaves the underlying debt intact, with no absolution for Loan Fité. It is final, immediately enforceable, and imposes no costs on either side.