According to the new regulations in force from March 15, 2018, the financial statements of a Polish company can only be submitted by a member of the management board having PESEL number entered in the KRS register.
This may turn into a serious legal problem if, at the AGM for 2017 financial year, held in 2018, a new management board is appointed. The (new) management board has then 15 days (counted from the date of the AGM) to file the 2017 financial statement an related documents to the KRS commercial register. All this has to be done electronically and can be done only by a person holding PESEL number and entered in the KRS commercial register as the board member of the company. This, in turn, may prove to be difficult if not impossible, because the KRS registration of new board members can take from 3 to 8 weeks (or even more in extreme cases). And we approach here the perils of the Polish law – failing to file the above-mentioned documents in these 15 days may lead to criminal liability under Article 79 item 4) of the Polish Accounting Act, with the penalty being either fine or limitation of liberty (ograniczenie wolności). The incumbent board member may easily prove to be innocent in the criminal proceedings, but the sole fact that he/ she may face criminal prosecution while being completely innocent, requires a quick turnaround for Polish legislator. Unfortunately, no sign of a novelty to this legal conundrum has appeared so far.