Hi, Steve
Okay - where to start?
1 - you would certainly have been the first to know if your company HAD been re-registered, as you would have had to give someone a POA to do this and to pay for the process.
2 - yes, it will be liquidated and the property sold to recoup the expenses.
3 - given the number of companies in the same predicament, it will take a very long time to process them all, so it MAY be possible to halt the liquidation before it actually starts although there will be a cost both in lawyer's fees and in back-taxes/fines etc.
Now we need some more information and I apologise if you've already given this elsewhere:
- have you been paying municipal taxes for the past
X years? If not, why not? Regardless of the reason, there will be arrears and fines to pay on this and you'll need to take a view on this extra expense - it's unlikely to be a massive amount but it all depends on how tight your finances are.
Shelling out 190 notes to get a good idea of where you stand is surely not a bad investment. Once that is established, I'm sure the lawyers can give you a good estimate of what further expenses are likely to be involved and indeed if the situation is salvageable.
Now the bad news:
In the worst-case scenario, not only will you lose the company and its assets (ie the house) but the government will then sell the assets to cover the cost of the whole exercise, including the costs of sale, fine for non-re-registration, costs of liquidation etc. I have no idea what the house is like, in terms of location, condition etc but it is likely that it will be auctioned on the official site (
КЧСИ). Properties these days go for a LOT less than they did a few years back, even on the open market; when it is a forced sale then the amount realised will be VERY low. There are stories that the sale of anything even vaguely attractive is fixed and goes to certain "favoured buyers" - I can only speculate as to how true this is but I suspect that it is likely to be the case. If the house in question is a normal village house it was probably bought at an inflated price anyway and is almost certain to fetch very little, even in a genuine forced sale.
By now you're probably wondering what is "bad news" about all that. The answer is that the BG government have declared that once the assets of a company liquidated in this way have be sold, they will then start court proceedings if the proceeds of the sale of those assets is insufficient to fully cover the costs, fines etc. Once a court order for payment of the difference has been made, the courts in the UK are bound by EU legislation to automatically enforce them. The BG legal system is rather ramshackle but there are a lot of foreigners in the same boat and the government realises that there is a useful source of revenue here, as well as an opportunity to bring the company/property scene into proper regulation (and hence improve its image to Brussels).
So our worst-case scenario is that you may well already be in for a large chunk of unanticipated expense; it may be years before all this happens but I wouldn't like to have it hanging over me. In my view, you really have to find out exactly what the situation is and, if possible, pay the arrears/re-registration fees/fines to stop the liquidation and regain "your" house.
If that doesn't grab you, you could always consider forming a new company and snapping up your old property for peanuts when it does eventually come up for auction.
Do bear in mind that the lawyers may well suggest that the government won't go through with their plans to pursue defaulters - they
may be right but if they aren't they stand to make more money, so second-guessing the politicians' determination is a win-win situation for them!
