For donations Click Here

Broker vs. Investor keeping extra money

Question:

I hope you can help me with the following שאלה, which is נוגע למעשה and just came up tonight:
Reuven brokers loans for private lenders and recently facilitated a loan between Shimon and Levi (Jewish lenders) and Richard (an aino Yehudi borrower).
(Shimon and Levi sent the money to Reuven and he forwarded it to Richard for them. The loan documents identify Reuven’s private company as the lender. Richard paid Reuven a fee at the initiation of the loan and monthly interest payments. For his services, Reuven keeps the initiation fee, as well as a small amount of each monthly payment, and he forwards the rest of the monthly payments to Shimon and Levi.)
When it was time to repay the loan, Reuven sent Richard a “payoff statement” calculating the interest due thru the end of the month.
When Richard paid that amount a few days before the end of the month, Reuven emailed him, offering to refund the amount he overpaid because a few days of interest were not earned yet (it came to an extra $157). (Reuven did this both to make a kiddush Hashem and to curry favor with Richard to encourage their doing business again in the future. He realizes now that perhaps he shouldn’t have done that without permission from Shimon and Levi.)
Richard emailed back:
no need it was only two days
thank you again for everything
The shailah is: Does Reuven need to give Shimon and Levi some or all of the $157? And if he does need to, should their amount be divided evenly between them or according to the percentage each of them invested in the loan?
Reuven argues that a) maybe the borrower’s email makes this like the case of the Rama in חו”מ סי’ קפ”ג ס”ו, b) maybe he is a muchzak on the money (see Taz there), and c) maybe this harvachah isn’t mamash due to the lender’s money.
Thank you very much!

Answer:

Under the assumption that there was a heter iska between Reuven and Shimon and Levi, it seems that there are two separate deals going on here. The first that Shimon and Levi made an agreement to give Reuven money to do business with it, and in return he will give them X amount of profit from the deal. A second deal is between Reuven and Richard, a loan with interest. In order to answer you correctly, I need to know what the exact terms between Shimon, Levi and Reuven was. If they said that he has to give them a certain amount of interest, depending on which day he returns the money, then he has to fulfill what he made up with them, and tings are simpler. Then whatever he got from Richard has nothing to do with them. If however the deal was that he will forward whatever Richard give him, minus a certain amount, then it is more complicated. Therefore I need this clarification.

Hatzlocha

 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *