I have recently been scammed in Poland. My company accounts frozen.

Yeah, I've been passing on work too as I've had a very good business relationship with certain firms and we have helped each other a lot through the years.

There are scams in every country and I've lost quite a lot through this but we have our health and I've been offered a partnership in Ireland of all places :-) but I really no intention of moving there before this. I will find out more details next week about that.

Canada also sounds nice.
I'm literally just back from Norway but I couldn't live there, too restrictive.
I will always like Poland, I've had a fantastic time here and for the most part met great people.

Anyway I'll let youz know if my appeal is heard and what actions I take.

Sorry to hear about what has happened to you Sean.

I just got back from Poland where I've spent 3 month also battaling some legal issues (I will keep it private). The Polish law, bureaucracy, incompetence of employees, tons of paper work and unnecessary procedures are a huge embarasment for this country. It will take years for people to change the old school way of thinking and for institutions to be more citizens friendly.

GOOD LUCK!

It's not funny Pawian. It's a disingenuous way of dealing with it. The law in this case is divisive and unbalanced and assists the cheaters. When such large sums of money are involved, the burden of proof that the documents were served correctly should be on the claimant.

OK, you are probably right., I withdraw my words it was funny.


Are you going to reveal all their names here as a warning for other businessmen, both Polish and foreign, who might deal with them in the future?

This is not true, if I had have contacted more references and asked more questions all of this could have been avoided.


No.

The old butterfly effect......hindsight and all that.

When that FX company went into administration with my 8000 Euros a few years ago (i did post on here) i couldn't see any positives at the time to take from it. Low and behold we discovered my wife was pregnant about 6 weeks later, she definitely got pregnant after the bad news, according to our timing it was about 2 weeks later. When ever i think "fcuk" i could have bought myself a nice car or had a few holidays for that money i remind myself of this fact.

Within reason I always try to take positives from negative situations.

How so? Just curious.

Exactly, it's important to learn from mistakes otherwise I'll just end up repeating them.


Thanks, nice one.


Norwegians have a huge tenancy to believe that their way of life is the correct andonly way and although I do agree with much of their system i.e. the distribution of wealth, environmentally conscience, education and health services I could not live there.

If I were a pure logical robot it would be my first choice but I am human, I also need human interaction, diversity and challenges.

I think Poles have a tendency towards this but the wars and communism diverted them for a time.
A whopping generalization I have observed is that Northern Europeans are quite introverted, law abiding and obedient (except when history has dealt them a raw deal).

A kind of blinker put on them believing that the state will look after them, I tend not to share these characteristics and although it is a fantastic country, I feel it is not diverse enough in thinking.

Or maybe it's just me and each to their own :)

There are quite a few expats UK/Irish expats from the construction industry in Poland, moving out to Russia, the packages are very good, they can fly back to visit the family very frequently. There are American/Austrian/British companies in Warsaw with branches in Russia, another place is Kazakhstan. Do it the Polish way 5-10 years of your life and return to PL.

I have had a lot to do with construction and have weathered the slump well here but that was then and I am much more interested in other things.


I have had my fill of ex-soviet countries after Lithuania, I am not prepared to go into the belly of the beast :)


The major draw back is the cost of most other European countries for an apartment, food etc.. but that just means I have to plan well in advance and hit the ground running.

I seem to be going off topic....
I'll let youz know how the case is going after it is dealt with in about 50 years ;)

Yes, the Poles I've met seem to mention this quite a lot as a reason why they're glad to live in America.

Yeah lets go ride the economic horse and fcuk up Russia a bit, were done with Poland.

If you can get a ticket then why not, the gray-train always moves on. Once you can pay your mortgage and the kids school fees & have enough saved up for university fees, then its time to get social conscious.

Does it Warszawski? does it 'ALWAYS' move on? The train you're referring too has only been in motion for about 100 years and thats only for a small fraction of the 'privileged' population of this planet. It doesn't move on at all, we (the select few) only choose to perpetuate with our participation. So by your theory........grab a ticket whilst you can and screw everybody else? is that it? The wealthiest survive......


So a translation of that goes something like this: Look after myself and my family by playing the system by the game rules, then once we've done that and passed our social values to our children including religious dogma we'll then help save the world? Ohh pleeeeeease........

You know whats going on the same as i do, but you refuse to advocate based on social circumstance.

I am not advocating the type of business ethic which SeanBM experienced, although those type of companies do deserve the worst. There are many things I personally do not like about doing business in Poland, my responsibility is not to change the game, that's up to the government to make things more transparent & clean up corruption. A smart man doesn't fight it he finds a legal way around it.


Yes I look after my own and always will do. What about you WB?


I am not on a crusade WB, I am interested in looking after my family. As a family we can only give back to others the surplus from our table.

I do like the message of Tom Shadyac in his documentary ' I am ' What's wrong with our world and how we can improve both it and the way we live in it.

If you can get a ticket then why not, the gray-train always moves on. Once you can pay your mortgage and the kids school fees & have enough saved up for university fees, then its time to get social conscious.

Hear Hear!

Hahahahhaha!
It is one damn hell hole.

Just noticed your quote. Bankers are dangerous because they control financial resources and with the financial resources comes influence; unfortunately they don't know what they don't know (they know finance but little else).

another incoherent piece of nonsense from you.


I understand what youre saying, do you understand what im saying?

There are many industries i will not get involved with based on my principles, advertising is probably at the top of that list but there are so many. I might just be able to lose the principles for a few years if i could earn enough to really make an impact for the better.

Bankers control investment capital. With the capital comes power and the power combined with their ignorance leads to corruption.

Well I have lived all my life in the UK and have never heard of this particular type of scam. There are others, but not this one.

It was very instructive topic SeanBM. Making business in Poland isn't easy loaf of bread. Wish You all best.

Quick update.

Ironically the Polish authorities have found there isn't enough money in the company to declare bankruptcy.

If the debtor issued bankruptcy proceedings against your company its understandable.

Have a look at the changes in the law:

worldservicesgroup.com/publications.asp?action=article&artid=5425

Can you provide more detail on what the services were?

You mentioned that you could have got more references... who would you have talked to?

What advice do you have for people before doing business in Poland?

Edit: If you had asked for all correspondence to be physical and electronic, would that have solved this problem?

Merged: Community Question: How was your business scammed?

Hi guys, I just read this post: https://polishforums.com/law/poland-recently-scammed-company-67502/2/

Those who have been scammed: Please give us details so we can hopefully avoid a similar fate.

Also, general advice on how to avoid being scammed is much appreciated!

Daim, when I moved to Poland to retire i did have an idea to make some business investments here, after a year of settling in I realised that things work differently here, the culture is very much (you have to look after your self) I have been told this and I have seen it in practice.

There also appears to be a free for all when it comes to doing business get as much out of customers or investors as fast as possible with no interest in repeat business (Go to a shop and you will see what i mean) There is even a Polish word to describe this common practice Kombinovac it is a part of the culture.

Many of my old business colleagues have said they would invest with me if I come up with a plan.

must admit I am going to steer clear of Polish business adventures for now (Wait until the practices here catch up to the rest of Europe).

Property is ok, but keep away from flats.

I will remain retired for now,

Kombinovac has a nice ring to it.

Update,
I was summoned to court today for questioning for potential fraud!

The story so far:
Subcontractor issued a fictitious invoice demand to pay twice, I don't know how but he has proof he sent it but my company never received it, this meant that it automatically went to the bailiff i.e. the court NEVER looked at my side of the case.
The bailiff couldn't get anything, so the subcontractor has claimed I defrauded them.
Back story:
I broke the contract with the subcontractor, I had a court appointed engineer make an expertise (project) showing all the damages made by the subcontractor.

I hope this will go away now, as my side of the story will be heard by the fraud squad and should be dismissed, if the subcontractor wants to proceed with the case to claim their invoice money they will need to pay 5% of the claim and I don't really see that happening because their invoice is so fictitious and they were mainly relying on a loop hole in the Polish law.