Serious Fraud

“I’ve never seen a company like this before”

René Benko received an additional sentence of two years of unconditional imprisonment. The court considered the damage to Hans Peter Haselsteiner’s private foundation to be proven.(Bild: Krone-Collage/Christof Birbaumer, APA/EXPA/ JOHANN GRODER)

René Benko has been sentenced to another prison term. He has now been convicted in the first instance for the alleged fraud against Hans Peter Haselsteiner’s family foundation. He was acquitted in the “luxury rifle” case. The verdict is not yet final. Follow the day’s developments in our live ticker!

Benko is alleged to have persuaded Hans Peter Haselsteiner to advance him five million euros on the basis of a personal guarantee—the judge found this to be proven. The second strand of the proceedings concerns a luxury hunting rifle that the disgraced real estate speculator is alleged to have concealed from his creditors. 

The first day of questioning was quite emotional; Haselsteiner had really laid into his former business partner. He claimed that Benko had sworn “on his life” to repay the five million: “That was agreed between us.” Haselsteiner denied that this had anything to do with a stock purchase.

“No one believes you when you say you don’t have five million anymore”
At the start of the second day, a wiretapped phone conversation between Haselsteiner and Benko from the period following the Signa bankruptcy was also cited, in which the Strabag founder accused his former business partner of stalling him: “No one believes you when you say you don’t have five million left.”

On Thursday, another longtime friend of Haselsteiner’s—entrepreneur and turnaround specialist Erhard Grossnigg—spoke about the intricacies of Benko’s Signa structure. He had been entrusted with rescuing Signa at the time and said: “I’ve never seen a company like this before—it’s so complex!” He said it took him several days just to make sense of the structure. 

Follow the trial in Innsbruck via our live ticker!

Acquittal in the Hunting Rifle Case
The case involving a luxurious hunting rifle with gold inlays was also heard. Specifically, Benko is alleged to have concealed the rifle—with elaborate gold inlays valued at 80,000 euros—from the bankruptcy trustee and the creditors. This is said to have prevented or reduced the satisfaction of creditors’ claims. The 49-year-old denies this as well, claiming that the rifle was “simply overlooked” and was in his possession because he was the “person responsible under firearms law.” The court accepted Benko’s argument, and he was acquitted. 

The Signa founder had already been sentenced to 30 months of unconditional imprisonment in late September in Innsbruck in a separate case involving fraudulent bankruptcy. He is currently still in pretrial detention, which he is serving in an apartment in Innsbruck while wearing an ankle monitor.