A Romanian company stops paying and the director keeps trading through a new vehicle, leaving the creditor with a claim against an empty shell. Director liability claims in Romania let a creditor pursue the person who ran the company into insolvency, but only where the file shows deliberate harm. We assess the file before anyone commits to litigation.
The claim does not start with a complaint against the director. It starts inside an open insolvency proceeding against the company. A court-appointed liquidator reviews the company's books, the movement of its assets, and the decisions the director took before the shortfall became final. Where that review points to a diversion of assets, a preferential payment to selected creditors, or a late filing for insolvency, a separate claim becomes possible. The liquidator brings it, or a creditor with standing brings it directly.
A creditor does not have to wait for the liquidator to act. Where the liquidator declines to pursue the director, or the insolvency proceeding stalls, a creditor holding an admitted claim can apply to bring the action itself, subject to the conditions the insolvency court sets. This route takes longer than most creditors expect, and it depends entirely on the quality of the company's own records surviving the insolvency.
These claims usually reach us through exporters, freight and logistics creditors, or service providers whose Romanian counterparty stopped answering invoices while the same director kept operating under a different name. The pattern repeats often enough that we screen for it early, rather than assuming every unpaid invoice hides a director liability case.
SOLUTIO reviews the liquidator's report and the underlying company records before advising whether a director liability claim in Romania is worth opening. These cases can run for a long period and stall completely if the paper trail is thin. Where the same group carries related claims in other countries, this file sits inside our wider practice on director liability claims, rather than being treated as an isolated Romanian matter.
Romanian courts look for a specific decision that caused the loss, not a general decline in the company's fortunes. A director who kept trading after the company could no longer pay its debts, or who moved receivables to a related company, gives the claim something concrete to argue. The same is true of a director who paid selected creditors while ignoring the rest. A director who simply ran a business that failed in a difficult market does not carry the same exposure.
The debtor side almost always argues the opposite reading of the same facts: that the company failed for ordinary commercial reasons and the director acted properly throughout. That defence succeeds more often than creditors expect when the file relies on inference rather than documents.
None of this needs to exist in finished form before we look at a file. It needs to exist somewhere, in some form, and the first stage of our work is establishing whether it does. A file with a plausible story but no documents behind it is not one we take further.
Romania does not restrict how a creditor reviews a director's conduct before filing a claim. What it does control is where the claim itself has to run: through the Romanian courts, under Romanian civil procedure, once the appropriate insolvency step has been taken. A claim cannot be argued, negotiated or resolved through correspondence or pressure applied from abroad.
Creditors sometimes treat a director liability claim as an extension of ordinary debt collection, sending letters and expecting a settlement. A director who knows the claim has no live insolvency proceeding behind it, and no documented decision to point to, has little reason to respond. The weight in these cases comes from the file, not from the letter.
Because Romania is a member state of the European Union, a judgment already obtained against a director in another member state can, in principle, move into Romania for enforcement without a fresh trial on the merits. That route only helps once a judgment exists; it does not replace establishing the underlying claim in the first place.
Where the same debtor also owes money on ordinary trade invoices, separate from the failed company structure, that side of the matter is better handled through recovering debt in Romania directly, without raising a director liability claim at all.
SOLUTIO assesses the file, decides whether a director liability claim in Romania is realistic, and coordinates the matter from outside the country. We read the liquidator's report, the company's records and whatever the client already holds, and set out what is missing before any Romanian filing is considered.
Filing the claim, appearing at hearings and enforcing any judgment inside Romania are carried out by admitted lawyers and licensed providers in the jurisdiction, working to instructions we set together with the client. We do not appear before a Romanian court ourselves, and we do not present the Romanian stage of this work as anything other than local legal representation, coordinated from outside.
The client decides at two points in this process: whether to support opening or continuing the insolvency step the claim depends on, and whether to proceed once the correspondent's view of the evidence comes back. We do not commit the client's money past either point without that decision.
The fee basis for this work is agreed with the client before instruction, separately from any fee owed to the correspondent for the Romanian stage. Neither figure is set until the file has been assessed and the realistic route is clear.
Any one of these on its own does not close the file automatically. Two or more together usually mean the claim is not worth opening, and we say so before the client commits money to a Romanian court.
Only in defined circumstances, generally where the director's own conduct caused or worsened the company's insolvency. A general trading loss during a difficult market is not enough on its own. The claim has to point to a specific act, such as diverting assets or trading while knowing the company could not pay.
In practice, yes. Most director liability claims in Romania run inside, or immediately after, an insolvency proceeding against the company, because that proceeding produces the liquidator's report the claim relies on. Pursuing a director without that proceeding open is possible in principle but far harder to support with evidence.
Bank records, board minutes and correspondence that tie a specific decision to the loss carry the most weight. A liquidator's report that already identifies the same conduct strengthens the position further. Claims built only on the fact that the company failed and the creditor was not paid rarely succeed on their own.
A judgment against the company is worth little once its assets have moved into another structure and the director is still trading under a different name. The longer the company stays formally insolvent without action, the harder it becomes to trace those decisions and tie them to the director. What we assess first is whether the paper trail still supports that link, before anyone spends time or money on a Romanian court.