You open your banking app from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and the balance of your French company has not moved for days. Transfers bounce back, the company debit card is declined, and your accountant in Paris tells you the account is frozen. Salaries are due at the end of the month, the URSSAF social security contributions and the VAT return cannot wait, and a supplier is threatening to suspend deliveries. Because you live abroad, every step takes longer: the bank asks for documents you do not have at hand, letters arrive at the registered office while you are away, and deadlines keep running whether you read them or not.

This guide explains, for a foreign founder or foreign-based director of a French company, why a French corporate bank account gets frozen, what each type of freeze means in French law, which documents actually unfreeze the money, and how to keep the company trading while the block lasts. French acronyms are explained as they appear: the Kbis is the official company identity extract issued by the court clerk, the greffe, the commercial court registry; URSSAF is the body that collects employers social security contributions; BODACC is the official bulletin where company events are published. The three situations covered here are a freeze decided by your own bank for anti-money-laundering reasons, the termination of credit facilities or the closure of the account by the bank, and a seizure of the account balance by an outside creditor through a saisie-attribution, the French procedure by which a creditor holding an enforceable title seizes a money claim in the hands of a third party, here the bank. Each situation follows different rules, different deadlines and different remedies, and confusing them is the most common and most expensive mistake. If you are still at the stage of creating the structure, read first the complete guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, from bank account and Kbis to VAT and first hire, then come back here when the account itself becomes the problem.

I. Why your French corporate account is frozen: one symptom, three different legal situations

A frozen corporate account is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Before sending any document or paying anyone, you must identify which of the three mechanisms froze the money, because each one points to a different department of the bank, a different statute and a different clock. Ask the bank in writing for the exact legal ground of the block, keep every letter, and compare the answer with the three situations below.

A. Your own bank blocked the account: anti-money-laundering vigilance, Tracfin opposition and termination of facilities

The most frequent cause, especially for companies whose shareholder or director lives abroad, is the bank own compliance department. French banks are subject to strict anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing duties. Before entering into a business relationship, they must identify the client and, where relevant, the beneficial owner, and verify those identities against written probative documents: “Identifient leur client et, le cas échéant, le bénéficiaire effectif au sens de l’article L. 561-2-2”, as Article L. 561-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code provides. For a foreign founder, the beneficial owner is typically you, and the bank must hold an up-to-date file on you: valid passport, proof of address abroad, company Kbis extract less than three months old, articles of association, and evidence of the origin of the funds that flow through the account. When that file is incomplete or out of date, the bank does not simply wait: the law requires ongoing vigilance, since “ces personnes exercent, dans la limite de leurs droits et obligations, une vigilance constante et pratiquent un examen attentif des opérations effectuées en veillant à ce qu’elles soient cohérentes avec la connaissance actualisée qu’elles ont de leur relation d’affaires”, under Article L. 561-6 of the Monetary and Financial Code. A large incoming transfer from abroad, a sudden change in the pattern of payments, or a director who moved country without telling the bank can each trigger an enhanced review, and during that review payments are held.

Where the bank cannot satisfy its identification and vigilance duties, the statute is blunt: “elle n’exécute aucune opération, quelles qu’en soient les modalités, n’établit ni ne poursuit aucune relation d’affaires”, in the words of Article L. 561-8 of the Monetary and Financial Code. In practice this means the account is not closed but paralysed: no outgoing transfer is executed until the missing documents arrive or the suspicion is lifted. A second, rarer but harsher mechanism is an opposition by Tracfin, the French anti-money-laundering intelligence unit. The service mentioned in Article L. 561-23 may oppose the execution of a transaction not yet carried out of which it learned through a suspicious transaction report, and that opposition can extend to related operations on the sums held by the bank. Where execution can be deferred, “les opérations sont reportées d’une durée de dix jours ouvrables à compter du jour d’émission de la notification de cette opposition”, under Article L. 561-24 of the Monetary and Financial Code, and the president of the Paris judicial court can extend that period or order provisional sequestration of the funds. During a Tracfin opposition the bank is legally forbidden from telling you why the money is held, which is why the adviser on the phone repeats that the file is under review and cannot say more.

The third bank-side situation is not a freeze at all but the termination of your credit facilities or the closure of the account itself. An overdraft authorisation or any open-ended credit facility granted to a business can only be reduced or cut off by written notice on expiry of a notice period set when the facility was granted: “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. Ce délai ne peut, sous peine de nullité de la rupture du concours, être inférieur à soixante jours.” That is Article L. 313-12 of the Monetary and Financial Code, and the sixty-day minimum is sanctioned by nullity of the termination, except in cases of seriously reprehensible conduct by the borrower or a hopelessly compromised financial situation. A recent illustration is the ruling of the Versailles Court of Appeal of 19 May 2026 (RG 25/04564), published at courdecassation.fr/decision/6a0d409bcdc6046d47445b53: a company challenged the closure of its professional account, arguing that the sixty-day notice had neither been mentioned nor respected, and the court rejected the claim after finding that the bank first letter of 29 November 2023 had expressly denounced the overdraft facility with a notice period expiring 31 January 2024, so that “La rupture du concours n’encourt en conséquence aucune nullité.” The court added, for the account agreement itself, that “sauf abus de nature à engager sa responsabilité, un établissement de crédit peut résilier unilatéralement une convention de compte à durée indéterminée”, citing the Court of Cassation commercial chamber ruling of 26 January 2010 (No. 09-65.086, published). The lesson for a foreign director is practical: keep every notice letter with its date of receipt, count sixty days from receipt, and ask the bank in writing for the reasons for the reduction or termination, which the statute obliges it to provide on request from the business concerned. An irregular termination can be challenged and can engage the bank financial liability, but a termination that respected the sixty days stands, and the company must then open an account elsewhere, with the right-to-an-account procedure of Article L. 312-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code as a safety net: “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”. The Banque de France designates a bank near the domicile or another place, and the procedure described on service-public.fr, droit au compte applies.

B. An outsider froze the money: saisie-attribution by a creditor and what it does to the balance

The second family of freezes comes from outside the bank: a creditor who holds an enforceable title, a titre exécutoire recording a liquid and due claim, seizes the company credit balance in the hands of the bank. “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”, states Article L. 211-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures. Typical titles used against French companies include a court judgment, a notarial deed with an enforcement clause, an URSSAF constraint for unpaid contributions, or a tax collection notice. The bailiff, now called commissaire de justice, serves the seizure deed on the bank, and the effect is immediate and radical: “L’acte de saisie emporte, à concurrence des sommes pour lesquelles elle est pratiquée, attribution immédiate au profit du saisissant de la créance saisie”, under Article L. 211-2 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures. From the moment the bank receives the deed, the seized sums legally belong to the creditor up to the amount claimed, even before any judge rules. Later seizures, even from preferential creditors, and even the opening of insolvency proceedings afterwards, do not undo that attribution. This is why the account looks frozen: the bank must keep the money available for the seizing creditor and refuses outgoing payments that would dispose of it.

Two protections soften the shock. First, the seizure must be formally notified to the debtor company by the commissaire de justice within eight days, failing which it lapses: “A peine de caducité, la saisie est dénoncée au débiteur par acte de commissaire de justice dans un délai de huit jours”, under Article R. 211-3 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures. That notification must contain, in very apparent characters, the warning that challenges must be raised within one month of service, failing which they are inadmissible, with the expiry date and the court to seise. Second, a minimum subsistence balance, the solde bancaire insaisissable, is left at the debtor disposal; no request is needed, the bank warns the debtor, and where several accounts exist the amount is computed across all credit balances with priority on sight funds, under Article R. 162-2 of the same code. For a company the practical value of that minimum is limited, but the eight-day notification and the one-month challenge period are decisive, especially from abroad.

The Paris Court of Appeal ruling of 9 July 2026 (RG 25/14630), published at courdecassation.fr/decision/6a57a72193c619cd1ff96df5, shows how strictly courts apply these formalities and their limits. Two saisies-attribution served on 11 April 2025 on bank accounts were notified to the debtor on 15 April, within the eight days, and the court confirmed the seizures although one of them concerned a joint account whose co-holder had not personally received the notification: “aucune sanction n’est attachée, par les dispositions précitées, à l’absence de dénonciation de la saisie-attribution au cotitulaire du compte saisi.” The court also refused to release the seized sums to the co-holder, who produced no evidence that the funds belonged to her. For a foreign-based director, the message is twofold: check the dates on the notification the day it arrives, because a late notification kills the seizure, but do not count on formal defects that the statute does not sanction, and never assume that money on the account belongs to someone else without documents proving it. Note also that a saisie-attribution only bites on sums available on the day it is served; future receivables, future client payments and future capital injections are not caught, which matters when organising the survival of the business.

II. What to do from abroad to unfreeze the money and keep the company trading

Once the type of freeze is identified, act in the right order: secure the evidence of dates, rebuild the compliance file or challenge the seizure within its short deadline, and in parallel organise substitute payment channels so that salaries, social contributions and taxes keep flowing. From abroad, give a written power of attorney to someone in France, your accountant or your lawyer, for filings and appearances, and centralise all bank correspondence at one monitored address or in the online banking document vault.

A. Proving, writing and escalating: the file that lifts a bank freeze and the challenge to an irregular closure

When the freeze comes from the bank own compliance department, the remedy is a complete, current and consistent proof file, sent in writing, not by telephone. Assemble the corporate documents first: Kbis extract less than three months old, certified articles of association, register of beneficial owners, and the identity documents of every beneficial owner holding directly or indirectly more than twenty-five percent of the capital or voting rights. Add proof of address abroad for each foreign-resident director and shareholder, translated into French where the bank requires it. Then document the economic logic of the contested flows: the contract or invoice behind each large incoming transfer, the client purchase order, the loan agreement for a shareholder current-account advance, the bank statement of the sending account abroad showing the origin of the funds. Inconsistency between the declared activity and the observed flows is precisely what extended vigilance targets, so the file must tell one coherent story: who pays, for what, under which contract, with funds coming from where. Send the file by a traceable channel, email with acknowledgement of receipt or registered letter with acknowledgement, and expressly ask for written confirmation that the vigilance review is closed or for a list of the remaining missing items. Telephone assurances that the file is complete have no probative value if the freeze continues.

If the bank does not answer or maintains the block without explanation, escalate in three steps. First, write to the bank complaints department, then to its independent mediator, whose contact details appear in the account agreement and on the bank website; mediation is free and suspends nothing but creates a dated record. Second, complain to the banking supervisor, the ACPR, the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, for persistent breaches of account-information duties, and to the Banque de France for a right-to-an-account designation if the relationship is definitively broken and the company has no other deposit account in France. Third, where the freeze causes quantified loss, have formal notice served and prepare a liability claim: an abusive maintenance of a block, or a termination of facilities in breach of the sixty-day notice of Article L. 313-12, can engage the bank financial liability, as the Versailles ruling of 19 May 2026 recalls by enforcing the nullity sanction the other way round, only where the notice was missing. Conversely, verify before suing that the bank did not respect the notice: count sixty days from the receipt stamp of the first registered letter, check whether the letter expressly referred to the denunciation of the facilities, and confirm that no seriously reprehensible conduct or hopelessly compromised situation justified dispensing with notice. A claim filed without that verification wastes the cost of proceedings abroad and at home.

Where the situation is a Tracfin opposition rather than ordinary vigilance, accept what you cannot change and organise around it. The bank may not disclose the opposition, the ten-working-day freeze can be extended by the president of the Paris judicial court, and no proof file shortens it. Do not multiply suspicious operations during that window: new transfers risk fresh reports and an extended opposition covering related operations. Use the waiting period to prepare the full compliance file so that ordinary vigilance does not take over when the opposition ends, warn key payees of a short delay without disclosing anything about money-laundering suspicions, and document every loss caused by the delay in case a later dispute allocates responsibility. If the freeze follows the appointment of a new foreign director, a change of shareholder, or a transfer of the registered office to another city, send the bank the updated Kbis, the minutes of the appointment and the new proof of address spontaneously: most post-change freezes lift within days once the file is current, and the delay usually comes from the company never notifying the bank.

B. Contesting or absorbing a seizure: one month to act, protecting the balance, keeping payroll and tax alive

When the freeze is a saisie-attribution, the clock is the shortest in French enforcement law and it runs from service of the notification, not from the day you actually read it abroad. The notification must state, in very apparent characters, that “les contestations doivent être soulevées, à peine d’irrecevabilité, dans le délai d’un mois qui suit la signification de l’acte par assignation”, with the expiry date, under Article R. 211-3. Within that month, the challenge is brought by summons before the enforcement judge, the juge de l’exécution, of the debtor domicile, and the summons must be reported the same day, or the next working day at the latest, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt to the commissaire de justice who carried out the seizure. Miss the month and the challenge is inadmissible, however strong the merits; miss the same-day report to the bailiff and the summons itself is at risk. From abroad, this means instructing counsel in France immediately on receipt of the scanned notification, without waiting for the original to travel by post. The grounds worth pleading are the absence of an enforceable title, a claim that is not liquid or not due, payment or set-off that extinguished the debt before service, seizure of sums that were legally unavailable or exempt, or a notification served after the eight-day period, which incurs lapse of the seizure. What the Paris ruling of 9 July 2026 teaches is equally important: do not build the whole defence on the absence of notification to a joint holder or on bare assertions that the money belongs to someone else, since the court attached no sanction to the former and demanded documentary proof for the latter.

Sometimes the wiser commercial decision is not to contest but to absorb the seizure and protect the rest. Verify the exact amount attributed: the attribution is capped at the sums for which the seizure was made, plus accessories, and any surplus above that cap remains available. Check the minimum balance left at your disposal under the solde bancaire insaisissable mechanism and confirm with the bank on which account it was applied. Remember that only balances available on the day of service are caught: organise with clients and debtors so that new payments arrive after the seizure or on a different account where lawful, without organising insolvency, which would be a criminal offence. If the underlying debt is genuine, negotiate a payment plan against a release of the surplus and a commitment not to renew the seizure, and have the creditor instruct the bank in writing. Where the title is an URSSAF constraint or a tax collection notice, parallel administrative remedies exist, but they do not suspend the attribution by themselves: only a stay granted by the competent judge or payment stops the creditor from collecting.

While the account is blocked, whatever the cause, the company legal and tax obligations do not pause, and the foreign director personal exposure grows with each missed deadline. Salaries must still be paid at month end, and the monthly or quarterly social declarations, the DSN, déclaration sociale nominative, must still be filed with URSSAF; unpaid wages expose the company to labour court claims and the director to claims for mismanagement. VAT returns, the CA3, and corporate income tax instalments must still be filed and paid to the tax authorities, impots.gouv.fr, with late interest and surcharges accruing automatically. If cash is unavailable, prioritise in this order: net wages, employee income-tax withholding, VAT, URSSAF contributions, then suppliers, because the first three carry personal sanctions for the director quickest. Open a second professional account in another bank as soon as the first freezes, route new client receipts there, and keep written evidence that the freeze, not negligence, caused each delay: bank letters, seizure notifications, mediator correspondence. That evidence is what later persuades a labour court, URSSAF or the tax administration to remit surcharges, and what protects the director if a creditor later alleges a fault in management. If the freeze lasts and the company cannot meet its liabilities, take advice quickly on the duty to file for insolvency within forty-five days of cessation of payments at the commercial court, because waiting until the account is empty and the summonses pile up turns a curable cash incident into a personal liability case.

Conclusion

A frozen corporate account in France is never resolved by repeating the same transfer or by shouting at the helpline. Identify first which of the three mechanisms struck: your bank own vigilance duties under Articles L. 561-5, L. 561-6 and L. 561-8, possibly with a ten-working-day Tracfin opposition under Article L. 561-24; a termination of facilities or closure governed by the sixty-day notice of Article L. 313-12, sanctioned by nullity, as the Versailles Court of Appeal confirmed on 19 May 2026; or a saisie-attribution that attributes the seized balance to the creditor immediately under Article L. 211-2 and must be challenged within one month of the eight-day notification under Article R. 211-3, as the Paris Court of Appeal applied on 9 July 2026. Then act in the order the law rewards: written proof file and escalation for a bank freeze, immediate summons before the enforcement judge or negotiated absorption for a seizure, and in every case substitute payment channels so wages, VAT and social contributions keep flowing. From abroad, dates and written traces decide everything: keep every registered letter, count every deadline from the day of service, and mandate someone in France to act while you travel. Companies survive frozen accounts every week; those that survive are the ones that diagnosed the right freeze on day one.