“Risk of blackout”
Signa founder Benko must be in custody
Updated on 24.01.2025Reading time: 2 min.
There are allegations of fraud against Signa founder René Benko. Now a court ordered pre -trial detention for the Austrian real estate coon.
The former Austrian real estate investor René Benko has to be used. The district court in Vienna announced this decision on Friday. The founder of the insolvent Signa Group was arrested the day before in Innsbruck. A spokeswoman for the court cited “risk of blackout and act” as the reasons for the detention.
The Economic and Corruption Prosecutor's Office (WKStA) suspects the 47-year-old, as part of his personal insolvency proceedings, hide assets to creditors and authorities. It is about money from a family foundation as well as expensive watches and weapons. Benko did not provide any information about the allegations in front of the district court in Vienna, the spokeswoman said.
A number of investigations in Austria, Germany and Italy run against Benko, Germany and Italy, including alleged fraud, infidelity and bankruptcy. His lawyer denied the allegations.
Among other things, Benka suspects the WKStA of having deceived signa investors with a kind of money carousel. In this way, he tempted the donors with the reference to his own financial commitment to payments. In the end, he spent the amounts of the investors through transfers across several companies as his own contribution to the capital increase, according to the WKStA. According to the authority, an Italian villa of the Signa Group was also postponed to a family foundation in the vicinity of Benko without sufficient payment.
The entrepreneur, who was considered a multiple billionaire in his heyday, had built up a large portfolio with his Signa Group, which also included the German department store groups KaDeWe and Galeria and the Elbtower in Hamburg. In the course of increasing interest, energy prices and construction costs, the nested company construct collapsed. Benko demanded a total of around 2.4 billion euros. So far, the bankruptcy court has only recognized 47 million euros from this sum.
