René Benko amassed a fortune worth billions through his property and retail empire, Signa, which had ties to Switzerland.
Keystone-SDA
Austrian property tycoon René Benko has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after an Innsbruck court found he had caused losses to creditors.
The founder of the now-bankrupt Signa property group had paid an advance on rent of €360,000 (CHF338,000) for a property in Innsbruck, even though his business empire was already in a very precarious state, the court said on Tuesday when delivering its verdict.
Benko had already received a two-year jail sentence in October 2025 on these charges. He had, however, been acquitted on one count. The Supreme Court subsequently quashed this acquittal. This led to a retrial, during which the sentence had to be redetermined. The penalty range for the offence is one to ten years’ in jail.
Allegation of harming creditors
The charge centred on the allegation that Benko had made an advance payment of €360,000 towards the rent for a second residence even though he was on the verge of insolvency. He is alleged to have harmed his creditors as a result.
According to the APA news agency, Benko pleaded not guilty. He said that at the time he had been convinced that the restructuring of his Signa Group would be successful.
Benko said the house, in addition to his residence at the villa in Igls, had been rented at his wife’s request. The aim, he said, was to enable the children to lead a “normal life” and attend school as normal without the need for staff.
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The decline of the luxury department store
Globus co-owner
Benko, who denies all allegations, has been in pre-trial detention since January 2025. He had amassed a fortune worth billions through his property and retail empire, Signa. Rising interest rates and construction costs, as well as high-risk acquisitions such as the German department store groups Karstadt and Kaufhof, drove Signa into insolvency. Benko and other Signa managers are under investigation in several other cases.
The Signa Group was also a co-owner of the Swiss department store group Globus, whose operational business has since been sold to its partner, the Thai Central Group. One of the Signa Group’s largest lenders was the Zurich-based Julius Bär Group, which was forced to write off the entire loan amount of CHF606 million at the start of 2024.
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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
