The concept of declaring bankruptcy is well known in most western jurisdiction, as is the criminal practice of delaying bankruptcy. Believe it or not, in most of the developed world you can't just have a company go tits up and expect to go out of there scot-free.
> Durchgriffshaftung
I've never heard of this concept before, but from what I can gather it's a rarely applied legal practice that's defined by case law (case law is is pretty rare to encounter in Germany) and it essentially just sounds like what happens in the case of gross neglience / large scale fraud.