Since the beginning of this year, when personal bankruptcy was enabled by law, the Financial Agency (Fina) has received 668 requests for initiating extrajudicial proceedings, which precede the actual bankruptcy proceedings before the courts, and of that, 308 proceedings have so far ended in unsuccessful extrajudicial agreements, according to Fina’s data. Fina’s data shows that from January 1 to November 7, 666 citizens and two craftsmen, i.e., individuals engaged in self-employment, have requested the initiation of extrajudicial proceedings. The total amount of their reported obligations reached 327.2 million kuna.
By November 7, 308 proceedings ended with the issuance of a certificate of unsuccessful extrajudicial agreement. According to Fina’s data, the most such certificates, 94, were issued in the Zagreb counseling center, followed by the counseling center in Osijek with 33 issued certificates of unsuccessful extrajudicial agreement. Along with the request to initiate the proceedings, the debtor must also attach a list of their assets and total unpaid obligations. From these lists, it follows that the individuals who requested the initiation of the proceedings indicated that they have a total of 3,132 creditors, to whom they owe a total of 327.2 million kuna.
The law enabling personal bankruptcy – the Consumer Bankruptcy Act, came into force on January 1 of this year, and under it, this procedure can be requested by citizens or craftsmen, i.e., individuals engaged in self-employment, if they have fewer than 20 creditors, do not owe more than 100 thousand kuna, and no pre-bankruptcy or bankruptcy proceedings have been initiated against them.
Consumer bankruptcy proceedings are conducted by the courts, but the law stipulates that before initiating court proceedings, an attempt should be made to reach an agreement between the debtor and the creditor in one of the 21 counseling centers within Fina in all Croatian counties.
