European companies register scam: how to spot fake incorporation letters

These letters imitate an official formality to obtain a payment, often in the weeks following an incorporation or a change in the company. The DGCCRF (France's consumer and competition authority) warns businesses against these solicitations: check who the sender is, be all the more careful if it is based abroad, and read the small print before signing. The most common mistake: paying in a hurry, assuming the letter is a genuine administrative obligation.

Short answer. No "European Companies Register" exists in French or European law. Since the PACTE Act (Law n° 2019-486), the RNE (Registre National des Entreprises), managed by INPI, is France's sole incorporation body. Any letter demanding payment for a "European register" is either a private commercial offer with no legal standing, or an outright scam under Article 313-1 of the French Penal Code.

Neither French law nor EU law establishes a mandatory paid register under that name. No founding text, no accredited body, no national or European obligation requires payment to a "European Companies Register".

In France, the PACTE Act consolidated business incorporation into a single entry point: the RNE, operational since 1 January 2023 via the guichet unique at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr. At European level, national registers are interconnected through the BRIS system (Business Registers Interconnection System), but that system is a consultation tool: it creates no new payment obligation for companies.

Senders use legally public sources: Bodacc announcements, RNE data, and legal gazette publications. This lets them identify newly formed businesses with precision.

The most targeted structures:

• sole traders and micro-businesses (auto-entrepreneurs);
• recently formed SAS and SASU;
• single-member or small SARL;
• liberal professionals who have just declared BNC activity.

The timing is deliberate. In the weeks after incorporation, a director legitimately receives correspondence from URSSAF, the tax authority, the commercial court clerk, and sometimes the chamber of commerce. One more letter does not immediately look suspicious.

At our firm, clients who have just incorporated regularly forward us these letters asking whether they are mandatory. The answer is always no, but the confusion is understandable because the administrative vocabulary is carefully mimicked.

These letters share recurring features:

• Header: a logo imitating an official stamp, twelve-star European flag, blue-and-yellow colours, wording such as "European Union: Register of Companies".
• Fake reference number: a ten- or twelve-digit number formatted to resemble an INSEE or INPI identifier.
• Amount: varies with the "package" offered (basic, premium, international), sometimes with automatic annual renewal.
• Artificial deadline: fifteen or thirty days, with a warning of "penalties" for late payment.
• Legal disclaimer: the words "commercial offer" or "advertisement" are present, but printed in very small type on the back of the letter or at the foot of the email. Commercial information made hard to read can itself amount to a misleading commercial practice by omission (Article L. 121-3 of the French Consumer Code).
• IBAN: a bank account domiciled outside France (UK, Estonia, Poland, Cyprus), never an account belonging to the DGFiP or a French public body.
• URL: a domain designed to look official, such as eu-business-register.com or register-europe-fr.eu, never a .gouv.fr address.

Any single point below is enough reason to stop before paying:

1. The organisation cannot be found on any .gouv.fr site or on Légifrance. Search the exact name on Google restricting to site:gouv.fr. No result is an immediate warning sign.
2. The URL is not .gouv.fr. Every genuine French incorporation body uses a government domain. A .com, .eu or unofficial .fr URL proves nothing.
3. A short deadline creates payment pressure. Genuine administrative formalities are tracked, officially notified, and do not generate penalties via an unsigned letter.
4. The IBAN is foreign. The DGFiP, URSSAF, and commercial court clerks use French or clearly identified SEPA accounts. A Cyprus or Estonian account for a French administrative formality makes no sense.
5. The "commercial offer" mention is present but deliberately hidden. If the paid and optional nature of the service is not clear on the first read, that is a misleading commercial practice under French consumer law.

The RBE declaration is often confused with a paid external formality: it is filed on the single online portal (formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr), together with the registration application, for EUR 19.33 in the case of a commercial company. Missing this deadline exposes the company to a 7,500 euro fine. For detail on this obligation, see our article on beneficial owner declarations: obligations and sanctions.

The distinction matters legally, even though the practical response is the same in all cases: do not pay.

Situation 1: Clearly labelled private commercial offer. The letter states from the outset that it is an optional paid service (directory listing, legal monitoring, business profile). It may be poor value, but it is not a criminal offence if the terms are transparent. French consumer law applies, notably Article L. 111-1 on pre-contractual information.

Situation 2: Misleading commercial practice. The letter imitates an official body closely enough to create confusion about whether payment is mandatory, without the "commercial offer" label being clearly readable. Misleading commercial practices (Articles L. 121-2 to L. 121-4 of the Consumer Code, which also apply when the target is a business under Article L. 121-5) are punishable by two years' imprisonment and a EUR 300,000 fine, which can be raised to 10% of average annual turnover (Article L. 132-2); for a legal entity, the maximum fine is five times higher (Article 131-38 of the Penal Code).

Situation 3: Criminal fraud. The letter explicitly states that registration is mandatory under penalty of sanctions, with no legal basis. This involves use of false documents, fraudulent misrepresentation, and deception about the nature of the obligation. Article 313-1 of the French Penal Code sanctions this with five years imprisonment and a 375,000 euro fine. Filing a police report is appropriate.

In practice, the line between situation 2 and situation 3 is often blurred. A simple test: if you hesitated to pay because you thought it might be a legal obligation, the letter achieved the confusion it was designed to create.

Step 1: Contact your bank within eight weeks. If the payment was made by SEPA direct debit (SDD), you have an unconditional right to a refund within eight weeks of the debit date under SEPA rules. For a credit transfer (SCT), the procedure is more complex: report it immediately to your bank and request a fund recall. Keep all documentation.

Step 2: Report on SignalConso and file a police report. Go to signal.conso.gouv.fr to report the practice. This report is anonymous and feeds into the DGCCRF's analysis. In parallel, file a complaint at the nearest police station or gendarmerie, or send a letter directly to the local prosecutor (procureur de la République). Article 313-1 of the Penal Code (fraud) applies where the fraudulent nature is established. Keep originals: the letter, envelope, bank transfer receipt, and any correspondence.

Step 3: Check the terms and any right of withdrawal. The fourteen-day period of Article L. 221-18 of the Consumer Code protects consumers; a company only benefits from it for a contract concluded off-premises, outside its main activity, if it employs five people or fewer (Article L. 221-3). Read the general terms too, as they may provide a right to terminate, and send any challenge by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt.

In all cases, do not respond verbally or by email before securing written evidence.

These letters also appear after a change of director, a capital increase, a registered office transfer, or any publication in the Bodacc. Each event that triggers a legal gazette announcement can generate a new wave of solicitations.

The discipline of verifying any letter before paying is straightforward to establish: any correspondence requesting payment for a legal formality must be traceable to an official text on Légifrance or service-public.fr. If that link cannot be made within five minutes, the letter is suspicious.

For the businesses we support, this verification is part of our post-incorporation review, alongside the tax calendar and the first accounting close. See our article on expert business creation services to understand what that support covers.

This article reflects information available as of 16 October 2026. It does not replace individualised legal advice. If you are uncertain about a letter you have received, or if you have already made a payment, consult a lawyer or your accountant. For criminal proceedings, specialist legal counsel is recommended. The DGCCRF and the Ordre des experts-comptables can direct you to the right contacts.

Have you received a suspicious letter after incorporating or modifying a company in France? Our firm can verify in minutes whether a formality is real and help you secure your legal obligations from the outset.

This English section is written for international readers who need to apply the French guidance to a real management decision. The key point for the so-called European company register letter received by French SMEs is not to memorise every technical rule, but to connect the rule to documents, deadlines, cash impact and governance. For managing directors, legal teams and accountants receiving suspicious commercial letters disguised as official notices, the right approach is to identify the decision to be made, collect reliable evidence, and only then choose the accounting, tax, payroll or legal treatment.

The practical decision is how to identify a commercial offer (not an obligation), how to dispute the invoice and how to protect future signatories. That decision should be documented before the year-end close, financing discussion, payroll run, transaction signing or tax filing concerned by the topic. When the matter is material, the file should include who decided, which assumptions were used, and which professional advice was obtained.

Evidence to keep#

• copy of the letter;
• supplier signature register;
• internal alert procedure;
• DGCCRF report;
• legal-advisor correspondence;

Treating these letters as official obligations creates avoidable expense and feeds the practice; the safer reflex is to flag them with the team and the legal advisor. A clean file also helps the company answer questions from banks, investors, auditors, tax authorities, employees or buyers. It is usually cheaper to prepare that evidence during the process than to reconstruct it after a dispute, audit or urgent financing request.

Management checklist#

Before acting, management should run a short checklist. First, confirm that the entity, period and perimeter are correct. Second, compare the accounting treatment with the tax, payroll or legal consequence. Third, quantify the cash effect, because a technically valid option may still be unsuitable if it creates a short-term liquidity issue. Fourth, make sure the decision can be explained in plain English to a shareholder, lender, employee or buyer who is not familiar with French terminology.

For French subsidiaries of foreign groups, translation is also a control topic. A term that sounds familiar in English may not have the same legal meaning in France. The safer method is to keep the French source wording in the working file, then add a short English management note explaining the decision, the financial effect and the residual risk.

How Hayot Expertise would frame the work#

In a professional review, the starting point is the business objective. Is the company trying to reduce risk, close the accounts, prepare a filing, obtain financing, retain employees, sell a business or improve reporting? Once the objective is clear, the technical analysis becomes more useful because it is attached to a concrete decision. Hayot Expertise would generally separate the work into three layers: compliance, numbers and management judgement.

The compliance layer answers whether a rule applies and which documents are required. The numbers layer measures the effect on profit, tax, payroll, cash, equity, valuation or working capital. The management layer decides whether the option is consistent with the company's strategy and risk appetite. This separation avoids a common mistake: treating a French technical rule as if it were only an administrative formality.

A fuller decision framework#

For a director who does not work daily with French accounting and tax rules, the safest framework is sequential. Start with the legal form and tax regime of the business. Then identify the income stream, expense, asset, employee benefit, transaction or reporting obligation concerned. Then test the accounting treatment, the tax treatment and the cash effect separately. Only after those three views are consistent should the company automate the process in accounting software or payroll.

This matters because French compliance is document-heavy. A bank feed, invoice, contract, payroll notice or tax form may each be correct on its own, while the overall file remains inconsistent. For example, the accounting entry may not match the tax return, the VAT position may not match the invoice wording, or the management report may not match the board minutes. English-speaking directors should therefore ask for a short reconciliation note whenever the amount is significant.

Questions to ask before closing the file#

• What is the exact French rule or accounting principle being applied?
• Which document proves the amount, date, counterparty and business purpose?
• Does the treatment affect VAT, corporate tax, income tax, payroll or social contributions?
• Is the cash impact immediate, deferred or only visible at sale, audit or financing?
• Who inside the company owns the update next year?

Reading the French rules from an English desk#

For an English reader, the value of this section is not a literal translation of the French text. It is the bridge between French terminology and a management decision. It should help you see what to verify, what to ask the accountant, and where the risk may sit in the financial statements or the cash forecast. That is also why the French concepts are kept visible here rather than translated away.

When to ask for help#

Professional input is useful when the topic changes the tax result, payroll cost, legal position, financing capacity, valuation or shareholder relationship. It is also useful when the company is growing quickly and the same decision will repeat every month. A small error in a one-off file is inconvenient; the same error embedded in a recurring workflow becomes expensive.