Cheques are among the most mainstream mechanism for payments in any market all over the world. For organizations and people, be it instalment of credits, bills, expenses or other payments, cheque are the essential method of instalment. Every now and then, government and law encourage the individuals or organizations to utilise cheques as a method of payment to keep the market afloat. The major concern of every economy whilst issuing or using cheques as a method of payment is that cheques can be bounced or dishonoured by the bank, in case the cheque fails to fulfil the conditions established by the bank or the law. In this article, the Civil Lawyers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE will lay out clear guidelines for recovering your money in case the cheque issued to you was dishonoured by the bank in UAE.
What Happens?
Cheque bounce is a circumstance when the bank denies to release the payment on the cheque issued by the issuer due to multifarious reasons such as insufficient balance, false signatures, overwriting, stop payment instructions issued by the issuer of the bank. Since cheques are amongst the most popular form of payments in UAE, the law and the government made rigid and stringent rules and regulations for defaulters by punishing them in the event of non-payment.
What to do?
The primary step upon receiving a cheque is to approach the relevant bank for releasing the payments written on the cheque. However, in some cases, the cheque issued is not accepted by the bank due to aforementioned reasons and the concerned bank issues a letter for cheque bounce. The said letter allows to drawee of the cheque to raise a police complaint against the issuer of the cheque.
Although the law of the country allows the drawee of the cheque to file a criminal complaint against the issuer of the cheque, yet, upon filing the criminal case and receiving a judgment, the drawee will not be able to receive its payment as the criminal case will only oblige the issuer to face criminal penalties such as imprisonment or fine to be submitted to the court.
Apart from filing a criminal case to set a deterrent for the issuer, the drawee of the cheque can initiate the procedure by serving a legal notice to the other party, which will act as a step for resolving the dispute amicably, Nevertheless, failure to receive any response on the legal notice, will force the drawee to register a civil case against the issuer of the cheque for claiming the cheque amount, interest and compensation for the legal damages incurred. The civil case will be registered before the relevant court of the country in Arabic language along with sufficient evidences to prove the existence of a debt. The court, upon receiving arguments from both parties, will issue a judgment against the defaulter or as the case may be and will order the relevant party to pay the court charges and other relevant damages incurred by the party. The procedure of the courts in UAE are somewhat different from other jurisdictions, considering the adherence to principles of Shariah and thus would require Best Lawyers in Dubai to help you through the way.
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