296,000 euro fee

Signa Prime: Gusenbauer was asked to pay up

Ex-SPÖ leader Alfred Gusenbauer worked for financial juggler Benko from 2009.(Bild: Karl Schöndorfer/picturedesk.com)

The long-standing Signa Supervisory Board Chairman paid back 296,000 euros in fees from 2023 to the liquidator of Signa Prime Selection AG. A prominent ex-banker refused.

With his Signa conglomerate, René Benko has caused by far the largest insolvencies in Austrian post-war history. Less than a year after the billion-euro debacle, prominent members of the supervisory board were also asked to pay. This emerges from the current report by the administrator of Signa Prime Selection AG, which is available to the "Krone". Signa Prime bundled Signa's inner-city properties.

Reclaim to Gusenbauer
For years, former SPÖ Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer was the head of the supervisory body. The close confidant of financial juggler Benko - as well as all other former supervisory board members - received mail from Signa Prime's trustee Norbert Abel on August 12. In the letters, the fee payments received in 2023 were contested out of court.

Gusenbauer complied with the request and paid 296,000 euros into the insolvency administrator's account on October 16. Former casino boss Karl Stoss transferred 196,000 euros back, former Bank Austria boss Karl Samstag 138,000 euros. 

Others also had to pay
French billionaire Robert Peugeot, one of Signa's most prominent investors, also arranged a repayment of 91,200 euros in mid-October, while Wüstenrot CEO Susanne Riess-Hahn paid 50,000 euros to the liquidator.

"A lawsuit has already been filed against those members of the Supervisory Board who did not arrange for repayment," states the liquidator's report. The most prominent: former banker Karl Sevelda. An action for rescission is pending against the former CEO of Raiffeisen Bank International at the Vienna Commercial Court.