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Vienna criminal prosecutor accused René Benko of embezzling tens of millions of euros in the 2023 bankruptcy, authorities said it was actually under his control.
Benko chairs a group that owns half of the Chrysler Building in New York at its peak, which is part of London’s Selfridges, as well as some of Germany’s largest department stores. .
However, Signa, built with €5 billion in debt, began to collapse in late 2023, when one of its central companies, Signa Holding, filed for bankruptcy. Benko himself filed for personal bankruptcy in March last year.
The undergraduate has been in pretrial detention in Austria since January, allegedly fraud, misappropriation of public funds and fraudulent bankruptcy.
Criminal prosecutors in Berlin and Munich are also investigating potential misconduct, with Italian law enforcement agencies issuing arrest warrants last year for suspected suspicious payments to local officials.
Last December, a Benke lawyer said his client was confident that “any allegation against him could be clarified as essentially incorrect”.
According to a 38-page arrest warrant issued by Austrian prosecutors and seen by the Finneral Times Times, Benke was accused of cheating business partners into the failed property holding company and transferring the value of the company Cash and assets of millions of euros – including furniture worth 8 million euros, 90,000 euros Patek Philippe watches and expensive hunting rifles.
One of the controversial deals identified by prosecutors was the sale of luxury real estate villa Eden Gardone in Italy in 2023, originally owned by Signa Holding and sold for €46 million in August 2023 To Benko’s mother Ingeborg formally control the foundation.
The prosecutor has no cash, but rather, the mansion is because it is worthless when the entity filed bankruptcy three months later, and the mansion is paid for using stocks.
Prosecutors claimed the deal was “artificial and economically incredible” as it swapped luxury real estate for a depreciating equity in a struggling company.
They claim that the transaction is carried out at will, and that the sales documents lack detailed descriptions of the turnover assets, which are often the standard procedure for such a complex transaction.
Additionally, prosecutors claimed that Benko shot a gun at two family foundations, a concept controlled by his mother Ingeborg (a retired nursery teacher) and his daughter Laura, which is a potentially suspicious deal for many potentially suspicious deals Parties.
Prosecutors are also concerned that Benko will pay €2 million in cash to those close to him in 2023: a total of €15.5 million, according to the warrant, according to the arrest warrant.
They accused Benko of covering up his ownership in the Innsbruck mansion, worth €8 million and in October 2023, they featured the advance payment of rent cost. The next four years. Prosecutors claimed the payment lacked any “objective reason”.
While Benko was planning the so-called divestiture in 2023, he allegedly misled investors about his financial situation.
In mid-2023, when his own investment vehicle dropped to several thousand euros in cash in his bank account, and according to an unpaid debt investigation, Benko promised that he would personally donate 35 million euros to add 350 million euros to the Signa Holding Capital, arrest warrant.
Prosecutors claimed that he covered up the origin of the money through investments from two business partners through multiple legal entities in the empire, and then distorted the money into his own contribution.
Benko’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. Vienna’s prosecutor declined to comment.
