신용장거래에서 사기 및 서류위조에 따른 지급이행과 지급거절에 관한 고찰

Honour and Dishonour Relating to the Fraud and Forgery in Letter of Credit Transactions

Traditionally courts have been adopted over the years two standards of dealing with compliance of documents such as strict compliance and substantial compliance and the substantial compliance, which was somewhat less demanding than the strict compliance. However the new guidelines of ICC's international standard banking practice for the examination of documents under documentary credits set up how the UCP is to be applied in practice. The payment obligations of an issuing bank to a beneficiary are independence of the performance or the nonperformance of any contract underlying the letter of credit. However, strictly applying the principle of independence and abstraction could produce unfair results by operating unjustly enrich an unscrupulous beneficiary in case of fraud. Accordingly, when a beneficiary presents complying documents, the issuing bank is bound to honour the presentation unless the fraud rule applies on the facts of the case such as forged or material fraud. If it does, the issuing bank(issuer) needs not pay despite the complying presentation of documents by the beneficiary under the Uniform Commercial Code Article 5-109 and case law in America. However the fraud rule was not addressed in UCP 600. In conclusion, view in terms of legal principle and the court cases is variable and difficult to honour or dishonour the presentation in case of application of the independence principle and fraud rule such as the problems on burden of proof timely, possibility of granting injunction in order to protect against victim for bona fide applicant.