Shifted millions
Money, gold, Lake Garda: Benko’s bunker is in Vaduz
New details about Benko's discreet INGBE Foundation in Liechtenstein: gold worth 45 million euros is stored in the safes. There is also a lot of cash. And since August 18, 2023, it has owned six former Signa luxury villas on Lake Garda.
René Benko has created a completely opaque international group with his Signa Group. He has relied on deliberate concealment. For years, he systematically and unlawfully failed to publish annual financial statements. Together with his helpers, he organized a breach of the law in order to avoid having to show his cards. It is slowly becoming clearer and clearer why the Signa Group may have been a practically impenetrable thicket of more than 1000 different international companies: To make asset shifts between these companies as untraceable as possible from the outside, as joint research by "Krone" and "News" suggests.
It is August 17, 2023, and the financially ailing Signa and its top management Signa Holding are up to their necks in water. Benko has been trying for many weeks to get a much-needed cash injection. He has had to put off and reassure his co-investors for weeks. Benko's last hope: 400 million euros are to come from a fund in Korea.
The end of Signa is near
On August 17, Benko receives a final rejection from Korea. The 400 million will not come. The 46-year-old Tyrolean must have realized by now that his Signa house of cards could soon collapse. Even before August 17, millions had been repeatedly shifted within the Signa Group. But immediately after the demise of the hope for the Korean millions, Benko's Signa Group is once again getting down to business in terms of shifting: The Signa founder puts on the hat of a dispatcher, as it were, and instructs those closest to him - as if he were the ruler of a large shunting yard - to shift millions once again. Benko's inner circle is obviously practiced in carrying out transactions that are difficult to understand. This time, everything happens very quickly, even though four different countries - Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Italy and Austria - are involved in the transfer of millions.
A dubious swap
According to information from Krone and News, a highly dubious deal was put in writing and completed within the Signa Group as early as 18 August 2023, one day after the Koreans' rejection. At the center is a Benko foundation, which is apparently intended as the last safe bunker for Benko's millions: the INGBE from the discreet Liechtenstein, established in 2014 by Benko and his mother Ingeborg.
On August 18, 2023, this INGBE foundation based in Vaduz will transfer its 578,905 shares in Signa Prime AG to Signa Holding. The value of these shares is set at 46 million euros. A short time later, however, the price of the shares would tend towards zero after Signa Prime Selection AG had to file for insolvency a few months after the transfer.
A nice cut for the foundation
Benko's Liechtenstein-based INGBE Foundation makes a really nice cut with its now worthless share package in August 2023: it swaps its share package for six dream villas on Lake Garda, which belong to Signa Holding, which is also teetering towards insolvency. The property being shifted is Benko's beloved "Villa Eden", a luxury residence designed by star architect David Chipperfield. The Signa Holding creditors will have little joy later with the worthless share package (578,905 shares) that Benko had transferred to Signa Holding instead of the luxury property on Lake Garda.
Moreover, evil tongues claim that the six dream villas on Lake Garda would have been worth much more than 46 million euros anyway. But on August 18, 2023, Benko's shifters clearly don't care about that. The transfer of assets must take place. You can't worry about such trivialities in the heat of the multi-million euro battle. Incidentally, Benko's long-standing Signa Holding managing director Christoph Stadlhuber is at the center of the contracts in question.
The safe deposit boxes in the Principality
"Krone" and "News" have followed the money trail in recent months. According to them, Benko's last safe deposit box is located in the discreet Principality of Liechtenstein. While the Benko family's private foundation based in Innsbruck is now bankrupt, the INGBE Foundation still has considerable funds stashed away. As of summer 2022, gold worth 45 million euros is stored in the foundation's vaults. In addition, there are three million Swiss francs and two million US dollars in cash in various safe deposit boxes, spread across three banks. And the foundation recently acquired the six dream villas on Lake Garda.
It can be assumed that the Public Prosecutor's Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) could take an interest in the asset transfers shortly before the collapse of the Signa Group in the foreseeable future. After all, it is about shifts between the Signa sphere and the Benko sphere. After an initial examination of the documents relating to the strange swap of shares for dream villas on August 18, 2023, an expert in white-collar crime made the following assessment: "This could all be a textbook example of fraudulent crida."
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