The “untraceable” booklet A of a resident of Tours, who lost 28,000 euros of savings

Savings vanished and the nagging feeling of having been robbed. This is the misadventure that a resident of Tours, aged around fifty, is experiencing. While he wanted to recover the money placed in his Livret A since 1975, the date on which his parents opened this savings plan well known to the French, this Tourangeau had the unpleasant surprise of discovering that his account had been closed in 2016. Worse, the money in question would have since simply disappeared, transferred from the Savings Bank – of which he was a client – to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations without this having been notified to him as revealed The New Republic. Today, supported by a lawyer, he is trying to understand what could have happened.

And the amount involved is far from trivial. Because if his client had stopped funding his Livret A account, after it reached the maximum ceiling of 22,950 euros, the latter would still have had to continue to receive the interest on this investment. And this, without time limit, as attested by the official website of the French administration, on which it is specified that the ceiling of the booklet A “can be exceeded when interest is added to your savings”. “With interest, my client’s booklet A would therefore exceed 28,000 euros if it had not been closed”explains his lawyer Me Arnaud Tournier, who regrets that this sum is now “not found”.

No explanation, no solution

Contacted by Le Figarohe emphasizes that there are in this file both “a lack of explanation” but also «de solution»even though the two banking establishments were, each separately, informed of the situation by registered letter. Such a situation should never have occurred, to the extent that since January 1, 2016, banks and insurance companies must “list inactive accounts annually” et “inform the holders or rights holders”. And that's just“after a period of 10 years of inactivity”or even 20 years in the case of a PEL, that the balance of inactive accounts can be transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts.

And that's where the problem lies, since the main person concerned attests to having never received anything. “According to the information communicated to me, as well as the response that my client received from the Savings Bank on June 18, 2024, there is no clarification regarding any information that would have been sent to him reporting an account closure”continues Me Tournier. But if the bank “do not dispute the facts” which are criticized against him in this letter, it does not however provide “the proof” that a transfer has been made to the Caisse des Dépôts. The only information communicated by it: the booklet was closed and the funds were transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts on December 13, 2024. Without the amount of this deposit being specified.

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How to recover the amounts paid?

So where did the money go, and will it be returned to its owner? Saying “very careful” in this matter for which there is only one “extremely isolated case law”Me Tournier hopes that a “quick and transparent solution” will be able to draw himself for his client. Before recalling that booklet A is a “regulated product guaranteed by the State” the amount of which must “remain available” at any time. The file also raises numerous issues according to him, in particular “that of the trust granted by the saver who pays his savings to the bank” et “dependence” of it vis-à-vis the banks “to place” this money.

When contacted, neither the Savings Bank nor the Caisse des Dépôts had responded to our requests to date. But there is no doubt that the situation can find a positive outcome, knowing that if the sum has been transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts, it is not lost. “The beneficiaries or beneficiaries can claim and recover the sums paid (…) It is only after a period of 30 years that the unclaimed funds will be definitively acquired by the State”specifies the site info.gouv.fr. In 2016 alone, 6.5 million accounts and contracts were recorded as inactive for an average sum of 570 euros. That is to say nearly 3.7 billion euros transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts which “waiting to be claimed by beneficiaries”.