New allegations against Benko: It’s a three-digit million sum

The Signa Prime Selection, which bundled particularly valuable projects from the Benkos company structure that collapsed with billions in debt, acted as a money “vacuum cleaner”: According to the investigators, according to the newspaper report, it sucked up the money that investors spent on completely different Benko real estate projects. This was suggested by internal notes and emails from Signa managers, in which the word “vacuum cleaner” appeared again and again.

Million “Upstream”

According to “SZ”, the German investigators see this as a clear indication that money was systematically withdrawn from project companies and flowed to Austria. The responsible Signa Prime manager also expressed this internally to employees.

The procedure was also internally called “upstream” or “manual cash pooling”. It’s about a possible system of liquidity shifting.

The Munich law enforcement agency suspects that Benko and other Signa managers in the Munich Bahnhofplatz project did not use a 120 million euro payment from a well-known Munich real estate entrepreneur for the project.

However, they are said not only to have used the money as a “liquidity building block for the Signa Group”, but also to have concealed essential information from their house bank, Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), when it came to the listed building, which is now in ruins. The bank is said to have financed the old building only on the assumption that the German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof would return there as a long-term tenant. At that time, Galeria was also part of Benko’s corporate empire.

The money was used to plug liquidity holes in the Signa Group and to (co-)finance a capital increase to acquire the London luxury department store Selfridges. The investigation has been going on since May.

The report quoted by the “SZ” shows that the fact that the money should flow into the historic old building of the former Hermann Tietz department store at the train station was never seriously considered. However, this represents a judicial determination. According to Ö1’s “Mittagsjournal” on Saturday, Benko’s lawyer Norbert Wess did not want to comment on the new investigation: So far, the public prosecutor’s office has not granted complete access to the files.

Public prosecutor: “vacuum cleaner” also for Saudi Arabian millions

According to the Munich public prosecutor’s office, those responsible for Signa also used the money “vacuum cleaner” for another payment. A Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund invested 187 million euros in the “Franz” project – also at Munich’s Bahnhofplatz. The money should also be used to renovate the new building. But as soon as the fund transferred the millions to a Signa subsidiary in March 2022, Signa managers transferred almost 181 million euros to an account of the parent company Signa Prime Selection on the same day.

The remaining six million would have served as a “cash reserve”. Everything was always at the behest of Benko, who is described in the report as the central decision-maker, writes the “SZ”. There was already serious financial difficulties here in the Signa Group, and insolvency filings began at the end of 2023.

OGH appeal hearing on Thursday

Benko himself has been in custody since January 2025. That could change on Thursday. Then the Supreme Court (OGH) will discuss the appeals regarding Benko’s first trial for fraudulent Krida. In October 2025, Benko was sentenced to two years in prison for a 300,000 euro gift to his mother and was acquitted of the charge of making a high-cost rent advance payment (360,000 euros) for a house on Hungerburg near Innsbruck. If the guilty verdict were confirmed, Benko would be legally convicted for the first time in the Signa case and would henceforth be a prisoner, writes the “Tiroler Tageszeitung”.

Of course, the decision of the Supreme Court remains to be seen. Benko’s defense attorney Wess will argue before the Supreme Court that the first court misinterpreted factual allegations, especially with regard to the agreement between mother and son regarding the donation, Wess told the “TT”. The WKStA, in turn, said that it was opposing the acquittal because it did not consider any access to a rented villa to be suitable security for creditors.

Highly valuable women’s rings are the subject of Benko’s very own bankruptcy proceedings

In Benko’s own insolvency proceedings, the insolvency administrator is fighting on many fronts, as has been widely reported. The focus here has recently been on several rings – some of them extremely valuable women’s rings, reported the magazine “profil”.