He wasn’t even there yet and yet he was omnipresent. On the first day of the investigative committee, the focus was on Corona compensation payments to real estate juggler René Benko as well as his alleged tax avoidance tactics. Wolfgang Peschorn was the first person to provide information to take the business model of Benko’s Signa network of companies seriously into court. The second person to provide information was a former tax official who uncovered something spicy about the Wolf tax case. The “Krone” was live on site.
The tax official describes how in 2019 the then finance minister Eduard Müller – now head of the financial market supervisory authority – became loud when she informed him about her complaint in the Wolf tax case. He asked whether everyone had “gone stupid”. The U-Committee started chaotically and late, media representatives complained that their work was hindered and made more difficult. The Green parliamentary group leader presented a document according to which René Benko received an annual salary of almost 26 million euros in 2019 alone. “For what?” she asks, because he wasn’t officially the managing director. The Kika/Leiner bankruptcy remains an important chapter. Reclaims from the Republic will be an issue here, says Wolfgang Peschorn. The Signa model is “like the climate crisis” because it makes problems worse in the future, said the head of the financial prosecutor’s office about Benko’s opaque corporate network. Abuse of power, millions in funding and billionaires. The investigative committee starting today on the COVID-19 Federal Financing Agency GmbH, or COFAG for short, is a tough one. But what is it all about? As is well known, the entire country shut down in March 2020 due to the measures in connection with the corona pandemic. The government came under pressure to act in terms of economic policy. In April, a COVID-19 legislative package was passed to set the necessary measures to contain the virus and provide economic aid for the Austrian economy. A whopping 38 billion euros were promised to the red-white-red economy to support the Corona crisis. “Quickly and efficiently”? 19 billion euros of this, the funds from the so-called Corona aid fund, were provided by the specially set up COVID-19 financing agency des Bundes GmbH, COFAG for short. According to its own statements, COFAG’s task was “to take financial measures quickly, efficiently, transparently and comprehensibly to maintain the solvency and to bridge liquidity difficulties of Austrian companies during the Corona crisis”. Guarantees, fixed cost subsidies, loss compensation, default bonuses and lockdown sales replacement were provided. Criticism from the Court of Auditors For reasons of transparency, the agency also planned “regular reporting to the National Council”. It was there that the agency became an issue for other reasons. The Court of Auditors sharply criticized the agency, and the Constitutional Court even overturned its foundations. In November 2023, the two tried and tested U-Committee faction leaders Kai Jan Krainer (SPÖ) and Christian Hafenecker (FPÖ) agreed to set up a committee of inquiry into the agency. The NEOS spoke out against this. Billionaires close to ÖVP preferred? The subject of the committee starting today is any preferential treatment of people who can be attributed to assets of at least one billion euros and who have supported the ÖVP through donations or for their support was promoted by the ÖVP. The focus of the investigations will be on COFAG and its payments to billionaires close to the People’s Party. The focus is particularly on payments to real estate juggler René Benko and billionaire Siegfried Wolf, who, according to Krainer and Hafenecker, were presumably given preferential treatment. The tax files of entrepreneurs Franz Rauch, Stefan Pierer and Johann Graf were also requested from the Ministry of Finance. Based on the chat messages, some of which are already known, from the former head of the Austrian holding company ÖBAG, Thomas Schmid, connections and funding will be examined more closely. In connection with Benko, the Greens even want to invite an employee for large business audits from the tax office to appear before the committee. The two Green MPs Nina Tomaselli and David Stögmüller also submitted applications for the delivery of all files on Signa Holding, Laura Privatstiftung, Signa Luxury and Schlosshotel Igls, later on Chalet N. Benko is said to have been his best guest in the luxury resort, reported the ” Crown”. The Ministry of Finance is delivering parts of the files – including on rent arrears amounting to millions, but is initially refusing to deliver them to Chalet N. and the private villa. Both are not attributable to Benko. The companies that are attributed to real estate juggler Benko alone received 18.7 million euros from the Covid Financing Agency (COFAG) during the coronavirus pandemic. This emerges from figures from the Ministry of Finance’s transparency portal. This is too much for the liberal parliamentary group leader Hafenecker. This means that the limit of 14 million euros set by the EU Commission for corporate groups has been exceeded. Most of the funding went to the Kika/Leiner Group. Specifically, the sum for these companies in the years 2020 to 2023 is around 9.1 million euros. In the committee, the NEOS also focus less on COFAG than on the real estate juggler’s business and financial management processes. This goes back to 2018, when Benko bought Kika/Leiner, the furniture store chain that later received millions in Corona aid and went bankrupt last year. There are indications that it was already known in 2018 that Benko was only concerned with the real estate , never about saving 5,000 jobs, as claimed by the then turquoise-blue government. For this purpose, explosive chats – from Schmid’s cell phone, which is still very productive – should be presented. Benko and banking secrecy Meanwhile, in Vorarlberg, the board of Hypo-Landesbank went public after allegations that the bank had carelessly granted loans to the Signa Group. Released from banking secrecy, CEO Michel Haller spoke of “complex issues” that had apparently been “incompletely” or even “misrepresented”. Hypo, for example, participated in the “Chalet N” in Lech (secured with 20.8 million euros in liens) and in two other projects with 4.1 million and 5.2 million euros in liens. According to Haller, the lending for the “Family Benko Private Foundation” amounts to 47.3 million euros. As Haller also explained, the foundation’s balance sheet at the time of the loan decision in 2020 showed a reported result of 102 million euros. The proportion of debt capital was low. How much money the bank will actually lose as a result of the various bankruptcies in the Signa bubble palace is still uncertain. Benko will come on April 4th Back to the committee: Benko himself was originally invited to the second committee day on Thursday. Benko’s lawyer Norbert Wess canceled this appointment for his client, but agreed to the interview on April 4th. 1. COFAG 2. Information sharing and interventions 3. Cooperations between state-affiliated companies 4. State supervision The committee is investigating a total of four evidence topics and in a period from December 18, 2017 to November 23, 2023, the day on which the committee was set up – and thus from a point in time when there was no mention of the pandemic and the agency. Krainer and Hafenecker justified this by saying they also wanted to take a closer look at donors to the “Ballhausplatz” project. The former Interior Minister and current head of the Financial Procurator, Wolfgang Peschorn, as well as a former employee of the Ministry of Finance, have been invited to the first of seven planned committee days today. Peschorn could provide information about how great the damage is in the various causes – and whether it is Republic joins criminal proceedings as the injured party. The former employee was in charge of supervising the board of directors of large-scale auditing – responsible, for example, for the question of how much taxes Signa Holding has to pay. It is hoped that it will provide insights into important positions and explosive issues: the alleged tax discount for entrepreneur Wolf, which is being investigated, and the relocation of Benkos Signa from Vienna to Innsbruck, presumably to save taxes. The NEOS suspect a structural preference for certain actors in the Innsbruck tax office. In the U-Committee they want to clarify why. The “Krone” is there for you with a live ticker.
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