You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Your French company, a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules), was running normally. Then one morning your French bank tells you the account is frozen, or sends a letter announcing that it is closing your account. Salaries cannot be paid, the URSSAF (Union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the agency that collects French social security contributions) direct debit bounces, a supplier threatens to stop deliveries, and you are thousands of kilometres from the branch. This guide explains exactly what happened to your money, which of the three French mechanisms froze or closed the account, and how to unblock the funds and keep the company alive without flying to Paris. It covers the bank’s own compliance freeze, the bank’s decision to end the relationship, seizure by a private creditor through a saisie-attribution, and seizure by the tax office or URSSAF through a saisie administrative à tiers détenteur. Each situation has its own deadlines, its own court, and its own mistakes to avoid.

I. Your French company account was frozen or closed from abroad: identify which mechanism hit you

Before you write a single letter, you must name the mechanism. A frozen account is not a closed account, and a bank compliance freeze is not a creditor seizure. The document that tells you which one you face is the letter or notice you received: a bank letter mentioning anti-money-laundering checks, a formal notice of closure of the account relationship, a seizure report (procès-verbal de saisie) served by a bailiff, or a tax collection notice. Read it first, because every deadline in this article runs from that document.

A. The bank itself froze or closed your account: anti-money-laundering checks, missing documents and notice periods

The most common cause for a foreign-owned French company is the bank’s own compliance department. French banks must identify their customer and its beneficial owners when the relationship starts, and they must keep that knowledge current for as long as the account lives. Article L. 561-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code requires them, before entering into a business relationship, to collect information about its purpose and nature and to update it throughout the relationship. When the file is incomplete, the consequences are immediate. Article L. 561-8 of the Monetary and Financial Code provides that when the bank cannot complete its customer checks, “elle n’exécute aucune opération, quelles qu’en soient les modalités, n’établit ni ne poursuit aucune relation d’affaires”. In plain English: it executes no transaction and does not continue the business relationship. Your transfers stop, your cards are blocked, and the online banking access goes dark. This is the classic freeze that hits foreign shareholders who changed passport, changed company directors, moved the registered office, or never filed the register of beneficial owners (RBE, registre des bénéficiaires effectifs, the French register naming the real human beings behind a company) after incorporation.

The second bank-driven scenario is a suspicious transaction report. Banks must report to Tracfin (Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financiers clandestins, the French anti-money-laundering intelligence unit) any sum or transaction they know, suspect, or have good reason to suspect comes from an offence punishable by more than one year of imprisonment or is linked to terrorist financing. Article L. 561-15 of the Monetary and Financial Code states: “Les personnes mentionnées à l’article L. 561-2 sont tenues, dans les conditions fixées par le présent chapitre, de déclarer au service mentionné à l’article L. 561-23 les sommes inscrites dans leurs livres ou les opérations portant sur des sommes dont elles savent, soupçonnent ou ont de bonnes raisons de soupçonner qu’elles proviennent d’une infraction passible d’une peine privative de liberté supérieure à un an ou sont liées au financement du terrorisme.” A large incoming transfer from abroad with a vague reference, a round-trip payment, or cash-like activity can trigger a report and a freeze while the bank analyses the flow. The bank will not tell you that a report was filed; it will ask for contracts, invoices, and proof of the origin of funds. Answer fast, in writing, with documents, because silence confirms the suspicion.

The third bank-driven scenario is the outright closure of the account relationship. A bank may end an indefinite-term account relationship, but it must give notice. French law expresses this through two layers. The general contract rule, article 1211 of the Civil Code, provides: “Lorsque le contrat est conclu pour une durée indéterminée, chaque partie peut y mettre fin à tout moment, sous réserve de respecter le délai de préavis contractuellement prévu ou, à défaut, un délai raisonnable.” For credit facilities the rule is stricter and quantified. Article L. 313-12 of the Monetary and Financial Code provides: “Tout concours à durée indéterminée, autre qu’occasionnel, qu’un établissement de crédit ou une société de financement consent à une entreprise, ne peut être réduit ou interrompu que sur notification écrite et à l’expiration d’un délai de préavis fixé lors de l’octroi du concours.” The notice period fixed when the facility was granted cannot be less than sixty days, on pain of nullity of the termination. In practice, your account agreement (convention de compte) sets the closure notice, often thirty to sixty days for a professional account. A closure with immediate effect and no notice is therefore suspect and worth challenging, unless the bank relies on a serious contractual breach or a legal obligation such as anti-money-laundering rules.

Case law confirms that the notice period protects the company but does not rewrite the contract. In a judgment of 20 September 2023, the Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation held: “La notification par une banque, en application de l’article L. 313-12 du code monétaire et financier, de la résiliation d’un concours à durée indéterminée à l’expiration d’un délai de préavis ne le transforme pas en concours à durée déterminée” (Cass. com., 20 Sept. 2023, No. 22-15.878). During the notice period the bank cannot use a clause designed for unauthorised overdrafts to declare the whole facility due as if it were a fixed-term loan. For you, the lesson is practical: once you receive the termination letter, the sixty-day or contractual notice is your window to open a replacement account, transfer direct debits, and negotiate, and the bank must respect that window.

If the bank refuses to keep any account for your company at all, French law offers a safety net: the right to an account. Article L. 312-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code provides: “A droit à l’ouverture d’un compte de dépôt dans l’établissement de crédit de son choix, sous réserve d’être dépourvu d’un tel compte en France : 1° Toute personne physique ou morale domiciliée en France”. A French company with no deposit account, after a refusal, can ask the Banque de France (the French central bank) to designate a bank that must open a basic account. Our companion guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder explains the opening stage in detail and remains the hub for the whole formation sequence: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire. The present article deals with the next chapter: the account you already had is now frozen or closed.

B. A creditor or the French tax office froze the money in your account: saisie-attribution and saisie administrative à tiers détenteur

If the document you received is a seizure report served by a commissaire de justice (the new name for the huissier de justice, the sworn enforcement officer), your money was frozen by a creditor, not by the bank. The procedure is called saisie-attribution: the creditor seizes the company’s claim against the bank, meaning the credit balance of the account. Article L. 211-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures provides: “Tout créancier muni d’un titre exécutoire constatant une créance liquide et exigible peut, pour en obtenir le paiement, saisir entre les mains d’un tiers les créances de son débiteur portant sur une somme d’argent”. In plain English: any creditor holding an enforceable title (a court judgment, a notarised deed, an unpaid cheque) recording a liquid and due claim can seize, in the hands of a third party such as your bank, the money claims of its debtor. The seizure has immediate attributive effect: the frozen balance is legally allocated to the creditor up to the amount claimed, subject to your challenge. Only certain protected sums escape, such as the minimum bank balance (solde bancaire insaisissable) equal to the monthly RSA amount for an individual, which rarely matters for a company account, and sums that are by nature unseizable.

The saisie-attribution must be reported to you (dénoncée) by the enforcement officer, and from that service a one-month deadline runs to challenge the seizure before the enforcement judge (juge de l’exécution, the specialised judge of the judicial court for enforcement disputes). Article R. 211-11 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures states: “A peine d’irrecevabilité, les contestations relatives à la saisie sont formées dans le délai d’un mois à compter de la dénonciation de la saisie au débiteur.” Miss the month and the challenge is inadmissible, however strong your arguments. Two Court of Cassation rulings shape this deadline in your favour. First, the Second Civil Chamber held that the month is extended when it ends on a non-working day: “lorsque le délai d’un mois pour former une contestation relative à une saisie-attribution expire normalement un samedi, un dimanche ou un jour férié ou chômé, il est prorogé jusqu’au premier jour ouvrable suivant” (Cass. 2nd civ., 4 June 2020, No. 19-12.260). A seizure reported on 9 March challenged on Monday 11 April was therefore admissible, because 9 April was a Saturday. Second, the denunciation itself must contain, in very visible characters, the statement that challenges are raised, on pain of inadmissibility, by a formal summons (assignation) reported to the enforcement officer within one month, with the expiry date. The Second Civil Chamber ruled on 3 July 2025 that “l’indication, dans l’acte de dénonciation, que la contestation est soulevée par une assignation, constitue une formalité substantielle dont le défaut est susceptible d’entraîner la nullité de l’acte sur la démonstration d’un grief invoqué par le débiteur” (Cass. 2nd civ., 3 July 2025, No. 22-20.423). From abroad, this means: have the denunciation act read by counsel immediately, diary the exact expiry date, and attack any missing mandatory statement, because a defective denunciation can annul the whole seizure if you show you suffered prejudice.

The public creditor has its own, faster weapon: the saisie administrative à tiers détenteur. The tax office (service des impôts des entreprises, the corporate tax department), the URSSAF, or customs can freeze your bank account without going to a judge first. Article L. 262 of the Tax Procedures Code provides: “Les créances dont les comptables publics sont chargés du recouvrement peuvent faire l’objet d’une saisie administrative à tiers détenteur notifiée aux dépositaires, détenteurs ou débiteurs de sommes appartenant ou devant revenir aux redevables.” The notice is served on the bank and on you, and it carries immediate attributive effect like a saisie-attribution. The copy served on you must state, on pain of nullity, the time limits and remedies. Typical triggers for a foreign-owned company: unpaid corporate tax (impôt sur les sociétés), VAT (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée) arrears, or URSSAF contributions after a direct debit failed. The challenge goes first through an administrative claim (réclamation) to the collecting authority and then to the administrative court for tax, or to the judicial court for URSSAF, within two months of the decision on the claim. Do not confuse the two routes: contesting the underlying tax debt and contesting the seizure itself are different actions with different judges.

A practical distinction closes this diagnosis. If the freeze letter comes on bank letterhead and mentions verification of documents, beneficial owners, or the origin of funds, you face a bank compliance freeze governed by articles L. 561-5 and L. 561-8 of the Monetary and Financial Code. If it comes from a commissaire de justice with a case number and a one-month warning, you face a saisie-attribution governed by articles L. 211-1 and R. 211-11. If it is headed “avis de saisie administrative à tiers détenteur” and signed by a public accountant, you face a public seizure governed by article L. 262. Each path is developed in Part II below.

II. Your French company account is blocked from abroad: unblock the money and keep the company alive

Diagnosis made, you now act on two fronts at once: attack the freeze or closure through the correct procedure, and keep the company breathing while the money is stuck. Doing only one of the two is the classic mistake of foreign directors: they win the legal battle six months later but the company has already missed payroll, lost its clients, and been struck off the trade register. The trade register (registre du commerce et des sociétés, kept by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court) records your Kbis (the official identity card of a French company, issued by the greffe) and your filings; the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette publishing company life events) publishes insolvency openings. A company that stops paying because its account is frozen slides fast toward cessation of payments, so the survival checklist in section B matters as much as the legal challenge in section A.

A. Challenge the freeze or the closure without flying to Paris: letters, deadlines and the right court

Against a bank compliance freeze, the first step is a written request for the precise missing documents and the exact reason for the block, sent by email and by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt to the branch and to the compliance department. List what you attach: updated Kbis of less than three months, articles of association, register of beneficial owners filing receipt, identity documents of the legal representative and of each beneficial owner holding more than twenty-five percent, proof of the registered office, and for each questioned transfer the underlying contract, invoice, and proof of the origin of funds. Ask for a written timetable for unblocking. If the bank maintains a general refusal with no precise reason, remind it of its duty to give reasons for reductions or interruptions of facilities on the company’s request, and keep every reply: this file becomes your evidence if you later claim damages for an abusive block or a closure without notice. Most compliance freezes lift within days or weeks once a complete, coherent file lands on the right desk, because the bank’s risk appetite returns as soon as the paper trail is clean.

Against a closure of the account relationship, check the notice first. Read the convention de compte: what notice period does it promise, and was it respected? If the bank closed with immediate effect or with a shorter notice than promised, send a formal demand (mise en demeure) requiring it to keep the account open until the contractual or reasonable notice expires, citing article 1211 of the Civil Code and, for any credit facility, article L. 313-12 of the Monetary and Financial Code with its sixty-day minimum. If the bank refuses, the commercial court (tribunal de commerce) can be asked in summary proceedings (référé) to order continuation of the relationship during the notice period and to award damages for brutal termination. Quantify the loss from day one: bounced salary payments, penalties from suppliers, lost contracts, emergency financing costs. At the same time, open a replacement account elsewhere immediately, because even a victorious court order takes time and your company needs a working account within days. If every bank refuses, file a Banque de France designation request under article L. 312-1: with the refusal letter, the company’s Kbis, and the representative’s identity documents, the central bank designates an institution that must open a basic account. The official service-public.fr portal describes the procedure and the documents step by step for companies as well as individuals.

Against a saisie-attribution by a private creditor, instruct counsel in France the day you learn of the seizure and diary the one-month deadline from the denunciation. The challenge is brought by assignation before the juge de l’exécution of the place of enforcement, and it must also be reported to the enforcement officer by registered letter, at the latest on the first working day following the challenge. Grounds that succeed in practice include: no valid enforceable title, a claim that is not liquid or not due, seizure of unseizable sums, over-seizure across several accounts beyond the amount owed plus costs, and a defective denunciation missing the mandatory statements identified by the Court of Cassation on 3 July 2025. Ask the judge, as soon as the writ is filed, for a stay of payment of the seized sums until judgment, so the money remains frozen but is not handed over. From abroad, give your lawyer a power of attorney, the seizure documents, the underlying contract file, and bank statements proving the nature of the seized funds. If the title is a foreign judgment, check first whether it is enforceable in France: without exequatur or a directly enforceable European title, there is no valid saisie-attribution, and the seizure collapses.

Against a saisie administrative à tiers détenteur, move on two tracks within days. First, file a written claim with the collecting authority disputing either the debt itself or the regularity of the seizure notice, and request a stay of enforcement (sursis de paiement) where the procedure allows it, offering guarantees if needed. Second, prepare the court action: administrative court for tax seizures, judicial court for social security seizures, within two months of the rejection of your claim, express or implied. Attack both substance and form: prescribed or already-paid debt, wrong taxpayer identification (SIREN number, the unique nine-digit identifier of a French company), seizure served on the wrong bank entity, and a notification copy missing the mandatory statement of remedies, which article L. 262 punishes with nullity. While the dispute runs, negotiate a payment plan (plan d’apurement): the authority often lifts or limits the seizure once a credible schedule with a first payment is signed. Never let the file sleep: public seizures compound with penalties and surcharges each month, and the impots.gouv.fr professional account shows in real time which debts the authority claims.

B. Keep paying salaries, tax and suppliers while the account is blocked: the survival checklist

While the main account is frozen, salaries are the absolute priority. French employment law does not accept “the bank blocked us” as a reason for late pay: wages must be paid on the contractual date, and delays trigger damages plus potential criminal liability for the employer. If the freeze lasts more than a few days, pay net salaries from a secondary account, the director’s shareholder current account (compte courant d’associé, the flexible loan account through which a shareholder lends money to his own company), or an emergency facility at another bank, and document each payment with payslips and transfer proofs. Declare social contributions to URSSAF on time even if you cannot pay them immediately: a late declaration adds penalties to the debt, while a timely declaration preserves your right to negotiate a payment plan. If cash runs out entirely, the wage guarantee scheme (AGS, Association pour la gestion du régime de garantie des créances des salariés) only intervenes in insolvency proceedings, which you want to avoid, so bridging the payroll for one or two months from abroad is almost always cheaper than letting the company slide into cessation of payments.

Tax and social deadlines continue to run during the freeze, and each missed one creates a new enforcement title that can justify a new seizure. File VAT returns (déclarations de TVA) and the corporate tax return on the impots.gouv.fr professional account on time, even with a payment request deferred or spread. The VAT intra-Community number (numéro de TVA intracommunautaire, the FR-prefixed identifier allowing EU cross-border invoicing) stays active as long as returns are filed; stop filing and the administration can suspend it, which blocks your EU invoicing on top of the bank freeze. For URSSAF, use the online account to declare and immediately request a payment plan (délai de paiement) with the first instalment dated: collectors routinely grant schedules to companies that declare spontaneously and pay the first instalment, and a granted schedule suspends new enforcement. Keep the SIREN and SIRET numbers (SIRET, the fourteen-digit identifier of each establishment) consistent across all filings so payments are allocated to the right account and no phantom debt triggers a second seizure.

Suppliers and clients need active management, not silence. Inform key suppliers in writing that a bank incident has frozen payments, give a payment date, and pay critical suppliers first: the landlord of the commercial lease, the payroll provider, and any supplier with a retention-of-title clause. For clients, check whether incoming transfers can be rerouted to a replacement account without breaching contracts, and update the RIB (relevé d’identité bancaire, the French bank details slip) on invoices only after the new account is confirmed working with a test transfer in both directions. Update the beneficial owners register and the trade register filings without delay if the bank’s grievance concerns outdated company information: a fresh Kbis and a complete RBE filing often unblock a compliance freeze faster than any legal letter. Finally, diary every corporate deadline from the annual legal calendar: approval of the accounts within six months of year-end, filing with the greffe, and the general meeting. Our annual legal calendar guide details each deadline and the late fixes available: Your French Company Has a Legal Calendar: Approve Accounts, Hold the Meeting and File From Abroad. A frozen account never excuses a missed filing, and late penalties stack on top of the banking problem.

Two traps specific to foreign directors deserve a final warning. First, do not empty the frozen account through side channels or organise your own insolvency by transferring the business to a new company overnight: payments favouring one creditor once the company is insolvent can be annulled, and moving assets to escape a seizure can constitute fraud (fraude paulienne) or even criminal liability for misappropriation. Second, do not ignore French mail. The greffe, the tax office, and the courts write to the registered office; defence deadlines run whether you read the letters or not. Appoint a person in France, a lawyer, accountant, or domiciliation agent, to open, scan, and forward every official letter within twenty-four hours. Most foreign founders who lose their case lose it by default, not on the merits, because a deadline expired in an unopened envelope in Paris while they waited in another country.

Conclusion

A frozen or closed French company account is a solvable crisis if you name the mechanism on day one and act on both fronts. A bank compliance freeze lifts with a complete documentary file proving who owns the company and where the money comes from. A closure without proper notice can be challenged under article 1211 of the Civil Code and article L. 313-12 of the Monetary and Financial Code, while a new account, if necessary through Banque de France designation under article L. 312-1, restores operations. A creditor’s saisie-attribution lives or dies within one month of the denunciation under article R. 211-11, with the extensions and formal requirements the Court of Cassation confirmed in 2020 and 2025. A tax or URSSAF seizure under article L. 262 is fought through a fast administrative claim and a court action within two months, backed by a payment plan. Through all of it, pay salaries first, file every tax and social declaration on time, and never let a deadline expire in unread mail. Managed this way from abroad, the banking incident stays what it should be: an expensive interruption, not the end of your French business. For the full formation sequence that prevents most of these blocks, return to our hub guide: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire.