How to find a debtor in Poland
A very common phenomenon is a situation where the creditor does not have current address data of the debtor and sent by him or orders for payment are returned by Poczta Polska with the annotation “the addressee moved out” or “unknown addressee”. Usually, debtors are not willing to inform creditors about a change in their place of business or place of residence.
Having the address of the debtor is extremely important, because in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure, the payment must indicate the address of the debtor. Therefore, without the debtor’s address, it is impossible to pursue claims for payment through court proceedings.
If the debtor conducts an economic activity in establishing the address, the following help will help us: National Court Register or Central Register and Information on Economic Activity. In both cases, we can use the web browser and get basic information about the entities registered in them.
In the National Court Register (https://ekrs.ms.gov.pl/web/wyszukiwarka-krs) we find data on legal persons such as limited liability companies, joint-stock companies additionally there is information about general partnerships, partnerships, and partnerships, limited joint-stock partnerships and foundations, associations and healthcare facilities. The court register will provide us with information about company partners, its Management Board and current contact details. Using the internet browser available on the website of the Ministry of Finance is free and very simple. In addition to the web browser, you can personally go to the court headquarters to review the files of the company. In court files you can find more information than in the online register, for example, addresses of partners’ residence – and this is very useful information in terms of conducting court enforcement.
The other generally available browser for entities running business is the Central Register and Information on Business (https://prod.ceidg.gov.pl/ceidg/ceidg.public.ui/Search.aspx). This register contains information about natural persons running a business. We find there information about the address of doing business. Unfortunately, the register lacks data on the place of residence of a person running a business. Although in many cases the address of residence is synonymous with the business address. Data search is free and extremely simple.
The situation becomes more complicated if our debtor is a natural person not conducting business activity. In this case, we will not use any online register or search engine. If we want to determine the address of such a person, we must submit an application to the Commune or City Office for access to data from the residents register. However, we must be sure that our debtor is a resident of a given commune. If we do not have such knowledge, we can apply to the Document Personalization Center of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, which will provide us with the PESEL personal data upon request. The application must be justified, that is, we must demonstrate our legal interest in obtaining data from the register. The application should be accompanied by documentation confirming the existence of the debt (eg VAT invoices) and documents suggesting an attempt to obtain it, eg a request for payment directed to the debtor. Such documentation will also be necessary at the stage of litigation. An application for access to data is subject to a fee of PLN 31.00.
After obtaining information from the registers, you can proceed to the next stage of debt recovery, that is, debt collection and in the next enforcement stage.