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Vienna prison prosecutors have accused René Benko of embezzling tens of tens of millions of euros within the run-up to the collapse of his actual property empire in 2023, together with probably by the €46mn sale of an Italian luxurious property by his Signa group to a non-public basis authorities say was in impact managed by him.
Benko, who presided over a gaggle that at its peak owned half of New York’s Chrysler Constructing, a part of Selfridges in London and a few of Germany’s largest malls, was arrested in Austria final month following a prison investigation by prosecutors in Vienna, Munich and Berlin.
However Signa, which was constructed on €5bn of debt, began to disintegrate in late 2023 when considered one of its central corporations, Signa Holding, filed for insolvency. Benko himself filed for private insolvency final March.
Benko has been in pre-trial detention in Austria since January over alleged aggravated fraud, embezzlement and fraudulent chapter.
Legal prosecutors in Berlin and Munich are additionally investigating potential misconduct and Italian regulation enforcement companies issued an arrest warrant final 12 months over alleged suspicious funds to native officers.
In December, a lawyer for Benko mentioned his consumer was assured that “any allegations towards him may be clarified as substantively incorrect”.
In response to a 38-page arrest warrant issued by Austrian prosecutors and seen by the Monetary Occasions, Benko is accused of deceiving enterprise companions to inject €35mn into the failing property holding firm whereas concurrently shifting money and property price tens of tens of millions of euros out of collectors’ attain — together with furnishings price €8mn, a €90,000 Patek Philippe watch and costly looking rifles.
One of many contentious transactions recognized by prosecutors is the sale of the posh property Villa Eden Gardone in Italy in 2023, initially owned by Signa Holding and bought in August 2023 for €46mn to a basis formally managed by Benko’s mom Ingeborg.
As a substitute of money, prosecutors state that the mansion was paid for utilizing shares in a Signa subsidiary that grew to become nugatory when the entity filed for insolvency three months later.
Prosecutors allege that the transaction was “synthetic and economically implausible” because it swapped luxurious actual property for an closely devalued fairness stake in a struggling firm.
They declare the transaction was performed haphazardly and the sale paperwork lacked an in depth description of the property altering arms, usually customary process for such a fancy deal.
Furthermore, prosecutors allege that Benko referred to as the pictures at two household foundations — one notionally managed by his mom Ingeborg, a retired nursery faculty instructor, and one by his daughter Laura — which had been events to plenty of probably suspicious transactions.
Prosecutors additionally raised issues a few €2mn money cost in 2023 Benko made to an individual near him: a part of a sequence of funds between 2018 and 2023 that totalled €15.5mn, in accordance with the arrest warrant.
They accuse Benko of concealing his possession of furnishings price €8mn in an Innsbruck mansion and took problem with a cost of €360,000 in October 2023 to a authorized entity that owned a property he utilized in Innsbruck, characterising it as an advance cost of hire for the following 4 years. Prosecutors declare that this cost lacked any “goal justification”.
Concurrently Benko was orchestrating the alleged asset stripping in 2023, he was allegedly additionally deceptive traders about his monetary well being.
In mid-2023, when his personal funding car was down to some thousand euros of money in its checking account and in accordance with the investigation in impact bancrupt, Benko promised that he would personally contribute €35mn to a €350mn capital enhance of Signa Holding, the arrest warrant states.
The prosecutors declare that he channelled investments by two of his enterprise companions by a number of authorized entities in his empire to masks the origin of the funds, after which misrepresented the cash as his personal contribution.
A lawyer for Benko didn’t reply to a request for remark. Vienna prosecutors declined to remark.
