Your Partner in Bulgaria.

Roadworthiness tests in another EU member state

Today were enquired whether a truck, registered in one EU member state would have a valid roadworthiness test certificate if the test would to be performed in another EU member state. The problem is that the Community haulage permit holder (licensed in Bulgaria) had been stopped by the Bulgarian Traffic Police and after a document inspection they haven’t recognized the roadworthiness test certificate of the truck issued in Spain.
We have checked thoroughly whether this non-recognition is legal or not. Pursuant Art.4 of 77/143/EEC Council Directive, “roadworthiness tests within the meaning of this Directive shall be carried out by the State or by bodies or establishments designated and directly supervised by the State”. Stipulated like that it is still not very clear whether the Traffic Police in our case is right or not.

However, we have researched further on that and we have found that a very similar case have already been tried in European Court of Justice. In its decision on the case Johannes Gerrit Cornelis van Schaik v Hoge Raad der Nederlanden  in Para  21 the Court has ruled that:

...Article 4 of the directive further provides that the roadworthiness tests, within the meaning of the directive, are to be carried out by the State or by bodies or establishments designated and directly supervised by the State. Thus the directive imposes a territorial limitation on periodic testing.

The decision of the European Court of Justice are obligatory for all domestic courts, in terms of interpretation and best application of the European legislation in the member states. Therefore, the Traffic Police decision not to recognise roadworthiness certificate issued in a member state different from the one registered the vehicle is legal.

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Liquidation of Bulgarian limited company

  • 03.02.2012
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  • by Milen Hristov
  •   1 Comments

The biggest issue with the compulsory liquidation of the Bulgarian limited companies is the communication with the state appointed liquidator. Since the Registry Agency appoints liquidators from their liquidators lists, no one considers whether the company owner is foreigner or does he speaks Bulgarian. Some liquidators are not diligent enough when they see that the company owner is not Bulgarian. Sometimes they will not make efforts to contact the latter. One a separate note, this is difficult because the company owner address is spelled in Cyrillic letters and it is very difficult to restore the right English spelling.

Normally the the newly appointed liquidator will try to contact the capital owner(s) and request all company documentation i.e. contracts, bank account balance, court papers (if any), past years accounting reports etc. These will be needed to find out if the company has any outstanding debts and to repay them. Only then the rest of the company assets will be cashed and distributed among the company capital owners. Upon request of the capital owners and if available, any property left can be transferred to the company owner(s) without being cashed.

The latter is an exemption rather than a normal procedure. Therefore the company owners need explicitly and formally to request this transfer from the liquidator. If this request is not made in a formal way, the liquidator will sell the property on public tender/auction. As solicitors, we ensure that the formal request is submitted to the liquidator on time and no foreigner loses their property just because a formal request hasn’t been made to the liquidator.

Having said the above, I strongly encourage all Britons and Irish who still haven’t re-registered their companies – you still can keep your properties! The only effort you need to make is contact us with details of your Bulgarian limited company. We will take care of the rest.

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Bulgarian courts should accepts/send papers online

This week we have achieved a small victory. We are representatives of a client on a case, heard in Stara Zagora District Court. We have asked the judge to send by email copies of the latest hearing minutes. The judge refused, grounding her decision with “the court doesn’t have that practice”. We’ll that was not quite true. Art. 42 para 4 of the Civil Proceedings Code allows the court to send notices and subpoenas by email. We claimed that the court can use that to send copies of court documents too.

We have lodged an application to the Chairperson of Stara Zagora District Court, requesting the Chairman to “create such practice”. The court Chairperson accepted our arguments and ordered the judge to apply directly the aforesaid article. Yesterday we have received the requested documents by email.

I’m writing about this since that a major breakthrough in how the Bulgarian court operates. As I’ve said before, one of the major reasons of why lawsuits  take so long to be tried is the notice/subpoena problem. Electronic means solve this problem, but the the judges are reluctant to use them. There’s no explanation why.

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If your company is subject to compulsory liquidation

  • 31.01.2012
    • , by 
  • by Milen Hristov
  •   5 Comments

The deadline for re-registration has passed. Now all companies that have failed to meet the deadline will be liquidated. Most Britons have registered companies as holdings of their property in Bulgaria. the compulsory liquidation will put their properties on tender and will sell them before the company is closed. So what they can do?

Make sure you have someone to check your company file on a regular basis. This way you can find who is appointed by the Commercial register as a company liquidator. Once you know his details, you can contact him and discuss with him the options to transfer the property to the company owner without actually putting it on tender. This is one of the options the Commercial Act gives to the company owners i.e. instead of cashing the company assets, the liquidator can distribute the assets to the shareholders after he has paid the liquidation expenses, taxes and liquidator’s remuneration. you need to be persistent on this, since not every liquidator will agree to do it. Therefore it is advised that you hire a solicitor to negotiate on your behalf.

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Smartpartners-BG Ltd. declared bankrupt by Sofia City Court

Smartpartners-BG Ltd. – the developer of The Orchard, Bansko- have been declared bankrupt by Sofia City Court on 18.01.2012. The court resolution is sent by the court to the Commercial Register for announcing. It will be officially announced probably next week.

You can download the court decision in Bulgarian language from this link [PDF -1.1 MB].

As from the moment of announcing the court resolution, all creditors will have 1 month to present their claims to the administrator (through court). The court will review and decide whether to join the creditors or not. If they are allowed to join, they will benefit from all assets that are cashed by the administrator.

 

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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New changes to the transportation license regime is in force

The changes to Ordinance #11 2009 are finally adopted and promulgated in State Gazette. As from today most of the the new changes are in force. Some will be effective as from the start of next year. As I wrote before there was misinterpretation about these changes.

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