A big bang in the affair surrounding Austria’s most famous bankrupt: a court on the British Channel Island of Guernsey has frozen millions of dollars from a foundation run by René Benko.
This is evident from documents available at “Krone” and “News”. The backdrop will likely be an international arbitration proceeding in which the Arab state investment fund Mubadala is demanding around 700 million euros from the Signa Group and its founder Benko.
62 meter yacht for 25 million
In concrete terms, this concerns the 62-metre long yacht RoMa, with which Benko has been sailing the seas in recent years to attract investors. RoMa was owned by a subsidiary of the Laura Private Foundation. After the collapse of the deliberately opaque Signa conglomerate, the motor yacht would also be sold: it would have been sold for 25 million euros to Paul van Zuydam, owner of the Le Creuset Group, the world market leader for enameled cast iron cookware. . Van Zuydam is a South African entrepreneur whose fortune is estimated at half a billion euros.
“Global freezing order”
Now the court in Guernsey has initially collected the purchase price and frozen the millions from the transaction worldwide. The official court document, titled ‘Global Freezing Order’, states: ‘Until further orders of this court’, one may ‘not dispose in any way of the proceeds from the sale of a superyacht named RoMa.’
This court ruling is a first serious blow for Benko and his private foundation Laura, which the financial juggler founded together with his mother – but of which he no longer wants to be a beneficiary. Yet the real estate speculator was also in control of the Laura Foundation – until the end of January 2024 he was on the foundation’s advisory board, which could have a major influence.
As reported, the Benkos’ real estate is housed in the Laura Foundation. Recently, the suspicion arose that the bankrupt, who since his bankruptcy as an entrepreneur officially lives on 3,700 euros per month, could have set up a kind of shadow empire with the Laura Private Foundation. However, the numerous properties in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Innsbruck are subject to high levels of credit financing.
The exciting question is whether the many curators and creditors can crack the Benko foundations. As is known, interesting asset shifts took place a few months before the collapse of the opaque group of companies, now employing legions of lawyers and financial experts.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
