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Marsberg (dpa) - After the collapse of the Greensill Bank in Bremen, the NRW city of Monheim, the Hessian state capital Wiesbaden and 15 other German municipalities want to pull together to get their money back.

The Monheim city administration announced on Thursday that two law firms were hired to represent the interests of the municipalities in the insolvency proceedings.

The declared goal is to get back the money invested at Greensill, totaling almost 145 million euros, as completely as possible from the bankruptcy estate.

Monheim alone accounts for 38 million euros.

This makes the 44,000-inhabitant city the most affected among the municipalities.

Osnabrück (Lower Saxony), Schwalbach and Hanau (both Hesse), Pöcking (Bavaria) and the two NRW cities Marsberg and Emmerich are also participating in the legal interest group, as well as other municipalities.

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At the beginning of March, the financial supervisory authority Bafin closed the bank;

Private investors were compensated, but municipalities have not been covered by the deposit protection fund since 2017.

Numerous municipalities were customers of the bank - there are an estimated 50 in total in Germany. They had invested low-interest fixed-term deposits in order to avoid negative interest rates.

Now the municipalities are threatened with losing a lot of money, also because they will not be given priority in servicing their claims in what will probably have been years of insolvency proceedings.

The now commissioned experts should also examine claims for damages, as the message says - brokers and intermediaries in financial transactions could possibly be held liable.

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Monheim's mayor Daniel Zimmermann from the Peto party, which is only active locally, showed slight optimism.

It is clear, however, "that of course a completely new and complex procedure in its own way is pending here, which will take a lot of time and will therefore require us to be patient in the future."

A first creditors' meeting is scheduled for June 8th in Bremen.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210506-99-495501 / 2