A reader who is a close associate of a foreign-owned company, where the foreign owner is also the director of that company, alerted me to the problem of the inability to apply for funds from HAMAG and other credit institutions, which is done through the Fina portal Measures. However, from Fina’s explanation, it is evident that the problem is solvable, but to avoid confusion and the game of telephone among other foreign-owned companies and accusations of who is to blame, I would like to clarify what the issue is.
Namely, a foreign-owned company attempted to submit a request through Fina for some credit funds, and this can only be done by a person who has a digital certificate. In that company, the person with that certificate was the accountant who had sent financial reports in previous years, while the director did not have a certificate because he did not need one.
No Croatian Document
When last week the accountant tried to submit a request for the allocation of funds from the Government’s economic assistance measures, she was unsuccessful because the application indicated that she was not authorized to do so. She sought an explanation from Fina and received a response that after April 21, the request for assistance can only be submitted to Fina by an authorized person registered in the Court Register – which is the company’s director – through the NIAS system (the place for a unique application for all e-services within the e-Citizens project).
Fina decided on this move because this is not about sending financial reports, but about a request for the allocation of state funds, which can only be decided by the director or the management of the company. This means that the company’s director should have requested a credential and based on it submitted the request. However, for the people in the mentioned company, a problem arose because the company’s director (and owner) is not in Croatia, causing them to panic about how to resolve this, as there is no chance for the man to come to Croatia in this situation.
Reviewing the documentation sent to me by the reader, I saw that in the letter from Fina sent to that company, it states that it is possible to obtain a credential online through the NIAS system (from April 21), which I told the reader, but I wanted to check with Fina just in case. However, the reader told me that the company’s director does not have any Croatian document, to which I replied that this is probably regulated as well, but I would check.
Fina confirmed this to me. Namely, from April 24 (three days after everything was enabled through the NIAS system), applications for measures can also be submitted by ‘foreign citizens – authorized persons who possess a credential from the List of Accepted Credentials’. This means that before that, company directors (including foreigners) must request a credential (in this case, the same one that his accountant has), based on documents from the countries they come from, and they do not need a Croatian identification document. After they receive the credential, they apply for the measures.
Everything Is Provided
– With each application, an option for ‘consent’ will be displayed, which needs to be opened, read, and confirmed – Fina states.
With the consent, the director authorizes Fina to collect the necessary data from the relevant authorities and institutions on his behalf and for his account for the purposes of monitoring the implementation of measures and their effects and reporting to the Government, and this consent can only be given by him.
Thus, the request for a credential, and then the application for Government measures, can be submitted by the foreign director from the comfort of his home in another country, and it is not necessary for the company to wait for his arrival in Croatia. I think it was important to write this to avoid, as I mentioned, incorrect conclusions and unnecessary accusations from other foreign-owned companies, considering that at least in this case, the institutions have anticipated everything.
POST SCRIPTUM
I read on the Lider website the opinion of lawyers Danijel Pribanić and Martin Sherri and their conclusion that entrepreneurs can sue the state due to the decisions of the National Civil Protection Headquarters regarding the ban on work. They say that the state could lose these lawsuits in courts solely due to the negligence of our rulers because the Parliament did not declare a state of emergency that would give the executive power greater authority than it has under the Constitution. They wonder why decisions are ‘made outside the Parliament when the Parliament is still in session and can make decisions promptly’. Indeed, I do not understand how such an oversight could occur among so many legal experts, because, although I do not expect mass lawsuits, it is not excluded that primarily those who went bankrupt during the pandemic will try to recover losses from the state.
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