A year and two weeks after the final collapse of the Signa Group conglomerate, the administrators are increasing the pace against the former bodies.
According to research by ‘Krone’ and ‘News’, former commissioners around former chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer will also have to pay heavily. A week before Christmas you received explosive mail: it concerns approximately one billion euros in claims that the curators want to enforce.
Until almost a year ago, Gusenbauer was chairman of the supervisory boards of the most important Benko companies: he was chairman of the supervisory boards of Signa Prime Selection and Signa Development Selection AG for many years, until their collapse. Both core companies of the Signa Group, which was deliberately built opaque, have been insolvent as of late 2023, with debts running into double-digit billions.
Former SPÖ chairman Gusenbauer moved to the financial juggler’s company in 2009, a few weeks after leaving the chancellery, without a cooling-off period. He was paid well there. For one week a month, the now 64-year-old former chancellor was already expected to receive a chancellor’s salary of around 280,000 euros per year. Exclusive bonus payments.
Millionaire advisor
In addition, Gusenbauer charged fees of more than twelve million euros to Signa Holding, which is now also insolvent, between 2020 and 2023 alone. For services in connection with the protective shield proceedings surrounding the German retail chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof. What exactly Gusenbauer did for this is still subject to speculation.
Things could now become very difficult for former Benko commissioners. In addition to Alfred Gusenbauer, other prominent members of the audit committee could also be included in the drawing. For example, the well-known French Benko investor Robert Peugeot, who held a supervisory position at Signa Prime from 2019. The Peugeot family’s fortune is estimated at around five billion euros.
In essence, Signa’s regulators are apparently blamed for not having adequately controlled business operations. René Benko, who has not formally held an official management position since 2013, but is considered the de facto ruler of the group, is said to have – to put it simply – moved his head of finance back and forth between the different companies. close liquidity gaps.
“Beermat” calculations
Two aspects are particularly remarkable: on the one hand, the trustee writes that the material bankruptcy of Signa Prime had already occurred on March 31, 2022. On the other hand, in the letter to the authorities he criticized the fact that there was “no appropriate control and no appropriate financial planning”. The curator literally writes about ‘beermat calculations’ that would not meet the requirements of a large company with a turnover of billions.
What is also striking in the treatment of the billion-dollar bankruptcies is a meeting of the supervisory board that took place in 2014 in the luxurious Chalet N in Oberlech. Chairman Alfred Gusenbauer opened the meeting at 4 p.m. And closed it at 4:10 pm.
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.
