Prosecutors abandoned investigations against one of the country’s busiest real estate developers, it has emerged.
Weekly magazine Format reports today (Fri) that the state prosecution stopped examining the operations of Vienna-based Signa Holding (Signa). A Luxembourgian bank informed anti-business crime officials in Austria about a transaction around two years ago. Now it was reported that juridical authorities cleared Signa of money laundering accusations.
Signa officials confirmed the Format report. Holding chief Rene Benko is quoted as saying: “Investigations such as these are anything but pleasing, even if one is convinced of not having done anything wrong.”
News that prosecutors decided to check the allegations that Signa engaged in money laundering emerged weeks after the firm engaged in a bidding war for German department store chain Kaufhof. Signa allegedly has excellent chances to snatch the company. Parental firm Metro started looking for a new owner of the struggling chain last year.
Signa is one of Europe’s most powerful property holdings. The company revealed in September it decided to invest 65 million Euros in the creation of a 78,000-square-metre building complex featuring villas, terraced houses and apartments at Lake Garda in northern Italy. The firm plans to finalise the building activities by 2013.
David Chipperfield and other renowned architects designed the facility. Chipperfield was also in charge of the design of Kaufhaus Tyrol, a department store in the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. The 30,000-square-metre shopping centre first opened over 100 years ago. It restarted operating in March 2010 following a renovation and redesign based on the British architect’s concept. Signa holds a 50 per cent stake in the mall.
Signa’s property portfolio is understood to be worth around 4.5 billion Euros. The holding invested 500,000 Euros in properties in the German cities of Munich and Hamburg last June. “I am not playing Monopoly. I want to create sustainable values with sustainable investments,” Benko said in an interview when asked why he was mainly interested in city centre estates.
A few weeks later, the Tyrolean tycoon disclosed he agreed with international business partners to locate a five-star Park Hyatt hotel in a former bank headquarter in the heart of Austrian capital Vienna. Benko said the hotel would open in 2013. He added that it would feature a 1,500-square-metre Prada fashion store.
Signa has offices in Vienna, Munich and Dusseldorf, Germany. The holding was established 12 years ago. One of its best known consultants is ex-Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) chairman Alfred Gusenbauer. The former politician headed a government coalition of his party and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) for one and a half years from 2007. Incumbent Chancellor Werner Faymann succeeded Gusenbauer as party leader in 2008.
