Contestations

Signa Prime reclaims 456 million euros

Signa construction site in Vienna's Mariahilfer Strasse: buyers desperately sought.

(Bild: Peter Tomschi)

The restructuring administrator has identified 442 payments that are to be recovered with the help of an auditing firm. A lawsuit has already been filed against the tax consultancy firm TPA.

Signa Prime Selection AG, one of the core companies in the convoluted Signa conglomerate, has been officially insolvent since the end of 2023. This was determined by the court. Creditors have filed claims amounting to 12.205 billion euros against the company, in which financial juggler René Benko had mainly inner-city properties stashed away for years. An army of criminologists, lawyers and auditors have been investigating the company's history since the opening of insolvency proceedings. Important questions are: Was Signa Prime not insolvent much earlier? Was the insolvency possibly filed far too late? Are there any contestable shifts in assets?

Restructuring administrator Norbert Abel has now taken a step forward in dealing with the past: He has identified "as part of a rough examination" 442 payments made by Signa Prime before the opening of insolvency proceedings "which are potentially contestable". This is stated in his fifth report to the Commercial Court of Vienna, which is available to the "Krone".

These 442 payments can be assigned to 142 potential opposing parties. In total, 456.1 million euros are involved, which are to be recovered with the support of the auditing firm Grant Thornton Austria. So far, 47 letters of demand have been sent with a deadline for repayment (90.6 million euros). Lawsuits are being prepared against 20 opposing parties - this involves a total of 77 million euros, which is to flow back into Signa Prime's clammy coffers.

Benko's law firm
A lawsuit for 3.94 million euros, which has already been filed, is somewhat explosive: This relates to contested payments made by Signa Prime to TPA Steuerberatungs-GmbH, which operated for many years as René Benko's in-house and court law firm. TPA had assisted the Signa Group in avoiding the consolidation obligation. As a result, there was no consolidated group balance sheet, which is equivalent to a financial group picture. As a Benko confidant, TPA partner Karin Fuhrmann has been on the board of the insolvent Benko family private foundation since 2011.