Quion Hypotheekbegeleiding B.V. – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)

The complainant was added in the blacklists maintained by the Dutch financial institutions for the period of four years based on three wrongdoings, registered by the mortgage advisor Quion: * Running a cannabis farm in an apartment the complainant was still paying mortgage for; * Not using that apartment as her own place of residence; * Not notifying Quion about her employment termination before signing the mortgage agreement. The Court found the following: * Running a cannabis farm is a criminal offence. For this information to be added in financial blacklists, it must be sufficiently established that the complainant has indeed been involved in the crime. This was not the case in this lawsuit, so Quion was ordered to remove this record from the internal blacklist; * Quion was ordered to remove the record about not using the apartment for own residence from the external blacklist but could keep it in the internal list; *  Quion was ordered to remove the record about the failure to inform about the complainant’s employment termination from the external blacklist but could keep it in the internal list. The decision was based almost entirely on the rules of the anti-fraud blacklist maintained by the Dutch financial institutions (“Protocol Incidentenwaarschuwingssysteem Financiële Instellingen”). One of the conditions for adding a person to these blacklists is proportionality, meaning that the interest of the financial institutions must outweigh the possible negative consequences of being added to this blacklist for the individuals. In this case the judge decided that Quion did not strike the right balance because the complainant kept paying the mortgage on time and there no damage was caused to the apartment or to the financial institutions.