Most effective debt recovery process, including debt recovery in Serbia, actually shouldn’t exist as a concept in mind of successful business people. This might sound strange, but the best solution is avoiding debt situation in the first place. And the term “avoiding debt situation”, isn’t just some empty philosophy, it’s possible and achievable.

Would you lend money without a written contract to an unknown person? Would you lend money with the written contract to a person begging on the street? If not and if that kind of behavior looks unwise to you, bear in mind that for many while doing business internationally, similar behavior tend to occur quite frequently. That is because public information about some company available to you often doesn’t reflect anything close to reality in terms of solvency and business manners of that company (keeping in mind southeast Europe). If you reach a situation where you have the claim against the debtor and he is refusing to pay, here in Serbia, that might signify that he is counting on getting away with it, otherwise, he wouldn’t act in that manner. Maybe he has already blocked bank account, maybe he is already preparing for liquidation or bankruptcy procedure, maybe he started a new company and started to transfer goods and money from debtor company… We don’t say that that type of story is prevalent in Serbia, but it does happen from time to time. And of course that in those situations there is applicable law procedure to ensure the protection of creditors, but that often include criminal procedures that are long here and they don’t provide an efficient solution in keeping your business safe and alive now. Your business is hurt by unpaid debt and you are not ready to wait for years in settling it. Now things are what they are, but the solution to this is prevention.

If you are planning to do business in Serbia, meeting your potential business partner should be just a tiny introduction for future cooperation. The main thing would be to get to know the company in question and the people behind. Serbian lawyer can become useful in those situations. As law office we can provide detail insight in some company, real figures about company’s financial success or maybe current hidden financial breakdown in progress, hidden political interests in some company often resulting in total political control and direct control of behavior of that company by outside people, details about owners of the company, their background, possible criminal behaviors, former creditor frauds and so on…

Why is this so important? Because with detailed research, we can predict the future behavior of some company and we can prepare good grounds for future business cooperation. We can be a step ahead of every fraud situation or debt occurrence. Before the beginning of cooperation, we can propose elements of protection- advance payment, bank guarantee, letter of credit or other, depending on results of the research or even propose to avoid doing business with some company at all. And what is the most important thing is that all of this is always significantly cheaper than any possible solutions to all kinds of business disputes that might occur latter.

So, if you wish to be clever from the beginning before you indulge your foreign company into the business waters of Serbia, consider contacting us as we can assist in keeping those waters calm over the future years. Feel free to check our website, Homepage, Contact page, or other parts of it, while our law office in Belgrade, the law office in Novi Sad, or our other law offices are at your disposal.