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.