Unrecorded Fund Account: Court of Cassation Ruling 2026/679

A customer says that the money deposited at the bank was "put to use" by an employee at the branch. No passbook was issued; the only record in hand is a handwritten slip kept together with the employee. The employee is arrested for irregularities, and in the lawsuit the bank's debt has been taken over by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF). The customer claims to have received back part of the money and says the remaining TL 19,675.00 was not paid. After years of proceedings the question is simple but hard to prove: how much money was actually left in an "investment fund account" that does not appear in the bank's records and is tracked only on a handwritten slip?

By its decision of 03.02.2026, Docket No. (E.) 2025/5958, Decision No. (K.) 2026/679, the 11th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation found the dismissal judgment, rendered in compliance with the earlier reversal, correct on the merits; it corrected only the error in the litigation costs awarded in favour of TMSF and upheld the decision as corrected, unanimously.

🏦 The plaintiff's account: an account without a passbook, an arrested employee

According to the text of the decision, the plaintiff's counsel stated that the money his client deposited at the defendant bank was put to use by the other defendant, a bank employee, that no passbook was issued to his client, and that this employee was arrested because of irregularities he committed. The plaintiff stated that, trusting the bank, he dealt with the employee and handed his money to him, that he had received back the part of the money amounting to TL 18,000.00 while the rest was not paid, and requested collection of TL 19,675.00 from the defendants with interest.

Counsel for the defendant employee argued that the plaintiff had received by EFT and transfer much more than the money registered for him at the bank. Counsel for the defendant bank argued that the plaintiff's receivable from the bank in his account was TL 52,902,646.00, while the bank's receivable from the plaintiff was TL 11,492,116,995.00. The text of the decision does not separately explain to which period and currency these amounts belong.

The event in the case fits a pattern often seen under the heading of investment fraud: the money is handed not to an official bank product but to an unrecorded "investment" arrangement run by a person inside the bank. For a similar example, see the article on this site about a bank employee's promise of returns and the bank's liabilityTR.

🧾 The handwritten slip and the expert examination

The case had earlier been returned after a reversal by the Court of Cassation, and the court of first instance (a civil court of first instance sitting as a consumer court) complied with the reversal ruling. Although the text of the decision does not set out the content of the reversal ruling, it appears that the examination after the reversal focused on the bank records and the unrecorded slips. The findings reached by the court can be listed as follows:

On these findings the court dismissed the case on the ground that no money was left in the plaintiff's account. What stands out is that the court did not disregard the handwritten slip on which the plaintiff relied; on the contrary, it accepted it and determined the balance according to this document. However, while the balance according to the same document was TL 19,675.00, the payments made on the following days total TL 21,000.00; that is, the amount paid exceeds the claimed receivable.

⚖️ The Court of Cassation's correction: the costs item

The party that appealed the judgment is not the plaintiff but TMSF, which took over the debt of the defendant bank and joined the case as an accessory intervener. The Chamber described the dispute as "a claim for the collection of money deposited in a deposit account".

The Court of Cassation's assessment has two layers:

1. On the merits: After the reversal, the claim for compensation was dismissed in line with the expert report obtained in compliance with the reversal ruling. The Chamber found no inconsistency with the law in this part.
2. On the litigation costs: It was seen, from the collection receipt dated 03.07.2023 in the case, that TL 3,200.00 in litigation costs had been paid by TMSF into the court's cashier. Even so, the judgment ordered that total litigation costs of TL 346.50, incurred by the defendant employee and TMSF, be collected from the plaintiff and given to TMSF, which the Chamber found to require reversal.

The Chamber stated that correcting this error did not require a retrial and, relying on provisional Article 3 of the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100 and the reference in provisional Article 2 of Law No. 5236, on Article 438/7 of the former Code of Civil Procedure No. 1086 (HUMK) in its form before amendment by Law No. 5236; it removed the words "TL 346.50" from paragraph (5) of the operative part, wrote "TL 3,200.00" in their place, and upheld the decision as corrected in this way.

🔢 "How much was left?" in an unrecorded account

The truly instructive side of the decision is which document, and how, the receivable is calculated from in an unrecorded investment arrangement. When there is no official passbook and no bank system record, the handwritten statements left in the parties' hands become important. In this case the court determined the balance on the basis of the slip on which the plaintiff himself relied, and then compared it with the EFT records of the same period.

This approach has two consequences:

The difference between the plaintiff's statement "I received TL 18,000.00" and the TL 21,000.00 found by the expert is not separately discussed in the text of the decision. The text is content with saying that the expert report is consistent with the documents and receipts.

🏛️ TMSF's position in the case

In the heading of the decision, TMSF appears in the capacity of "accessory intervener / debt assumer". In the banking system, some liabilities of banks transferred to the fund were taken over by TMSF; for this reason the fund may be a party or accessory intervener in lawsuits brought by former bank customers. For a different example of deposit disputes involving banks transferred to TMSF, see the article on this site about time-barred deposits and the transfer to TMSFTR.

In this case TMSF is the winning party on the merits; its appeal concerns only the understatement of the litigation costs payable to it. The Court of Cassation accepted the appeal objection only to this extent. The decision does not lay down a general principle on the limits of the liability of the bank or the fund in an unrecorded account relationship, because, as the plaintiff's receivable was covered by the payments, there was no need to enter into that discussion.

🧭 Takeaways for similar cases

Although short, the decision brings out several points about unrecorded "investment" arrangements run from inside a bank:

1. The weight of proof shifts to documents. Where there is no official record, handwritten slips, receipts and EFT statements are read together. In this case the slip was the document showing both the existence and the limit of the receivable.
2. A claim of partial repayment can change the calculation. The repayment amount stated by the plaintiff and the payments in the bank records may turn out different; in this case the court relied on the expert's findings based on the records.
3. Complying with a reversal sets the frame for the later examination. The Chamber upheld on the merits the judgment given in line with the examination and the report obtained in compliance with the reversal ruling.
4. Procedural errors are also corrected. Even where the result on the merits does not change, material errors in items such as litigation costs can be corrected by the Court of Cassation.

For a different case in which the bank's liability for transactions beyond a bank employee's authority was discussed, see also the decision on a bank employee's embezzlement and blank slip signaturesTR.

💬 Questions people ask

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