How to get a company stamp

[keepsmiling]

If you are in the Dubrovnik area, I can give you the name of a good English/Spanish/Italian
speaking notary. He will explain exactly what you need to do & will give you the name of a good lawyer if necessary.

You can tell this lawyer you have been advised to will report her to the Croatian bar council.

[Carol]

Mar 24, 2010 7:41:14 GMT 1 keepsmiling said:

You can tell this lawyer you have been advised to will report her to the Croatian bar council.

Apart from possible embarrassment to the lawyer, this will be an empty threat.

Someone collected those papers from the court and signed for them when they made the collection. So that person's signature will be on record and they probably still have them.

The lawyer can't prepare the papers or submit them to a court, only a notary. There is a good chance that it was the notary who collected them and will still have them on file somewhere.

[Carol]

when you start asking for them, call them your "company formation papers"
but before you do that search on this website (in english) to see if your company was ever registered. www1.biznet.hr/HgkWeb/do/extlogon

[janan]

Thanks so much for your help Carol and everyone. I've checked and the company was formed. My brother in law has found several documents that he was keeping "safe" and he's faxed them to me, so I'm busy Google translating them to see if any of them are the company formation papers. Two of them look likely and are signed by someone I've never heard of, so maybe this was the notary. One is from the Commercial Court in Dubrovnik and the other is from the State Institute of Statistics.

I have also scanned a imprint of our stamp at seriously high resolution, cleaned it up and ordered a replica stamp online, so at least we'll be able to use that for an urgent form that needs to be returned to the Cro National Bank by the end of the month (3,000 euro fine if we don't, apparently)

We have also got a very good (I hope!) bookkeeper working on the accounts now and she's managed to find a few things out for us. It turns out that a bookkeeper friend of the lawyer that we were briefly introduced to, was given some our our documents and somehow managed to get the bank to send our statements to her, and has been filing our accounts for the last 2 years and is now demanding payment (1700 euros for the 2 years). All I can think of is that the lawyer used our stamp to get the bank to send everything to the bookkeeper. Why the bookkeeper thought we wanted her to do the accounts I don't know. My husband made it very clear to her that we weren't interested as she charged too much.

It's all just such a mess at this point, and I'm really grateful for all the help

[crojoe]

I second Carol's advice. Since you’re not Croatian, your lawyer knows the law and will twist it to his/her benefit. So, everything has to be notarised, then at least you have proof. I think you can do it at a Croatian embassy, or have your relative in Croatia do it for you. Since it’s concerning property, I suggest you do it in person. The courts here are so slow, and most people try and avoid them at all cost. They have like a 10 to 15 year backlog of cases, so yours case could take ages.

[Madgolfer]

Following on from another thread about the cost of bookkeepers and accountants, €1700Euros for 2 years work does not sound too expensive, especially if it includes the end of year return.

1700Euros = approx 12000Kn = 500Kn per month

That is probably among the cheapest in Croatia.

Although it sounds as though you were not particularly well advised, the lawyers job was to explain that you MUST have a bookkeeper appointed as soon as you set up the company.

Had she had not done this you would potentially be in a much more serious trouble now, with fines and so on.

The bookkeeper should have asked you to sign some sort of contract, maybe its in with the other papers you cannot find?

[Carol]

But MG this company sounds like it had zero trading. I know an accountant in Split who would charge just 140€ per year in such circumstances...?

Crojoe... the company stamp gets round the need to have things notarised. As far as i know the only thing that a company director needs to have notarised is his signature when the company sells a property. Otherwise the company stamp is as strong as the notary's stamp.

Saying that i've just realised... how did this bookkeeper submit annual accounts without a company stamp? Its impossible. Has she had one made up? Elsewhere in the world, the stamp doesn't mean as much as it does in Croatia so you can use any stamp maker without any documentation. However in Croatia you would need your company formation papers in your hand when you go to get one made up. Could this have happened?
The stamp is very important because it authenticates documents much more than you signature, so it would be very dangerous if someone had one in her hand which she was using without the director's permission.
Can your new bookkeeper find out if annual accounts have been submitted? If so, then you have a whole new problem because there is a company stamp out there.

[gmh]

The dodgy lawyer had/has the company stamp and won't give it back. That's how the thread started. I pressume she let the dodgy accountant use it.
You definitely need to get that stamp back. If they don't give it back, I suggest you make a copy of your lawyers stamp by scanning any document you have with it on, and then set up a midnight exchange on a bridge in the fog somewhere.

[Madgolfer]

I agree, you MUST have some trading through your company each year, even if it is only water gas and electricity bills.

Even then, after a couple of years of this "minimal" trading you are likely to be asked for a return of any pdv refunds you have claimed.

Re the stamp issue, any printer will make these up for you and without any paperwork whatsoever. Just write what you want the stamp to say on a post it note and hand it in, we do it every couple of weeks.

(New stamps should now have your companies OIB number included we are told.)

[Madgolfer]

But MG this company sounds like it had zero trading. I know an accountant in Split who would charge just 140€ per year in such circumstances...?

Carol,

If they are prepared to work remotely and speak/write English, then please post (or PM me) their contact details.

Cheers.

K.

[janan]

Hi All, plenty of food for thought here!

Carol, very good advice about the letter, thank you again. If you do find out details about the accountants in Split and Kastela, could you send them on to me too?

I have to explain that the company is owned by my husband and his brother and I'm just the one left to clean up their admin mess. They are adamant however that they didn't knowingly sign anything to appoint this bookkeeper, and they were very clear at the time that they didn't want her to act for them. I asked my husband was it possible that they signed something without understanding what it was, and he said every document they were asked to sign when forming the company was in Croatian, so he didn't know what any of them were. (yes, I know, I did marry into a family of idiots).

The company hasn't had any trading at all. We use water from our rainwater cistern, we have no gas, and we pay our electric bills in cash in advance in the electric company office once a year.

GMH, love the suggestion about exchanging stamps ;D

btw, we just got our replica company stamp in the post this morning and it looks great! Thank goodness for Photoshop!

[alibaba]

Are you in Croatia now?? I saw them in LIDL in Cardiff last month. You just stick the letters onto the stamp and hey-presto!! Failing that there about ten pounds on ebay. Hope this helps.

[mambo]

Metro near Trieste also has them, 5 euro a piece.

[riki]

Mar 23, 2010 15:31:29 GMT 1 janan said:

Mambo, that's very reassuring to know that somebody else has done this! ;D

When you say "up to date registration papers of the company", are these the copies of the court registration that I can get from the internet? Do you have a link for this?

I would be very interested in this link for where to get registration documents online. It is quite a pain to have to get these every 6 months.

[siriwan]

Never heard you could get registration papers from the net! How would they be valid without a stamp on each page??

It is indeed a pain to get copies every six months but well...

I know you can order them by email but then you have to pay before they send them to you etc. I guess (I didn't try it, I simply sent a mail over a year ago to the Karlovac court and was told I could order or come directly to get them).