Millions shifted – money, gold, Lake Garda: Benko’s secret treasure in Vaduz

René Benko and his Signa Group have created a completely opaque international company. He relied on deliberate concealment. The systematic and illegal failure to publish annual accounts for years. He and his helpers staged a violation of the law to avoid having to look at his cards. It is slowly becoming clearer why the Signa Group was a thicket of more than 1,000 different international companies that was virtually impenetrable from the outside: to make the transfer of assets between these companies as incomprehensible as possible from the outside, joint research by ‘Krone’ and ‘ News’ suggest.

It is August 17, 2023. Financially ailing Signa and its group management, Signa Holding, are up to their necks in water. Benko has been trying to get a much-needed cash injection for weeks. He had to delay and reassure his fellow investors for weeks. Benko’s last hope: 400 million euros must come from a fund in Korea.

The end of Signa is approaching
On August 17, Benko received a final rejection from Korea. The 400 million will not come. It must now be clear to the 46-year-old Tyrolean that his Signa house of cards could soon collapse. Even before August 17, millions were repeatedly moved within the Signa Group. But immediately after the loss of hope for the Korean millions, things really come to the fore within Benko’s Signa group when it comes to switching gears: the founder of Signa puts on the hat of a coordinator, as it were, and points – as if he is ruler of your big marshalling yard – his closest environment to perform million-dollar services again. Benko’s inner circle is clearly adept at executing trades that are difficult to understand. Because this time everything is happening very quickly, even though four different countries – Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Italy and Austria – are involved in the transfer of millions.

A questionable exchange
Already on August 18, 2023, a day after the cancellation of the Koreans, according to information from “Krone” and “News”, a very questionable deal was implemented and processed in writing in the Signa Group. At the center is a Benko Foundation, which is apparently intended as the last safe bunker for Benko’s millions: the INGBE from discreet Liechtenstein, founded in 2014 by Benko and his mother Ingeborg.

On August 18, 2023, the INGBE Foundation, based in Vaduz, will transfer its 578,905 shares in Signa Prime AG to Signa Holding. The value of these shares has been set at 46 million euros. However, a short time later the share price would tend towards zero after Signa Prime Selection AG had to file for bankruptcy a few months after the transfer.

A nice cut for the foundation
Benko’s Liechtenstein INGBE Foundation will make a very nice change in August 2023 with its now worthless share package: it will exchange its share package for six dream villas on Lake Garda, owned by Signa Holding, which is also teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The moving object is Benko’s beloved property “Villa Eden”, a luxury home designed by star architect David Chipperfield. A little later, Signa Holding’s creditors will find little joy in the worthless share package (578,905 shares) that Benko had transferred to Signa Holding to replace the luxury building on Lake Garda.

Evil tongues claim that the six dream villas on Lake Garda would have been worth much more than 46 million euros anyway. But Benko’s ship employees apparently don’t care about that on August 18, 2023. The transfer of assets must take place. You can’t worry about little things like that in the heat of a battle for a million dollars. At the center of these contracts is Benko’s long-standing director of Signa Holding: Christoph Stadlhuber.

The lockers in the Principality
‘Krone’ and ‘News’ have followed the money trail in recent months. Benko’s last vault is located in the discreet Principality of Liechtenstein. While the Benko Family Private Foundation, based in Innsbruck, is now bankrupt, the INGBE Foundation still has significant financial resources. From the summer of 2022, gold worth 45 million euros will be stored in the foundation’s vaults. There are also three million Swiss francs and two million US dollars in cash in various safes spread across three banks. And the foundation recently owned the six dream villas on Lake Garda.

It can be assumed that in the near future the Public Prosecution Service for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) could be interested in the transfer of assets shortly before the collapse of the Signa Group. After all, it concerns shifts between the Signa sphere and the Benko sphere. In any case, after an initial examination of the documents related to the strange share exchange for dream villas on August 18, 2023, an expert in white-collar criminal law gives an opinion: “This could all be a textbook example of fraudulent Krida .”