Search for the money Fressnapf founder sues Benkos private foundation
September 28, 2024, 12:59 p.m. Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
While many investors have written off their shares in the real estate and trading group Signa, Torsten Toeller is not giving up. The Fressnapf founder is trying to enforce claims in court. At the center of the lawsuit is a private foundation run by the Benko family.
Fressnapf founder and Signa investor Torsten Toeller does not want to accept the loss of his investments in the real estate and trading group Signa. The “Spiegel” reports, citing court documents, that Toeller has filed a lawsuit against the Laura private foundation, which the insolvent Austrian entrepreneur René Benko once founded with his mother Ingeborg and whose beneficiaries are family members.
Toeller is therefore concerned with the thwarted exit from the company. The case has been before the Vienna Commercial Court since the beginning of August. Toeller’s lawyers complain that his investment company, Fressnapf Luxembourg GmbH, took advantage of an option promised by Benko to return its 4.5 percent stake in Signa Holding, but never received the money.
Billionaire Toeller is one of Signa’s first investors and one of the major shareholders who trusted Benko’s assurances for a long time. Those around him say that he is “far from over” with the personal defeat of having fallen for these promises.
2.4 billion in outstanding claims
Meanwhile, investigators in Benko’s empire have come across information that the insolvent Signa founder could apparently benefit from financial gifts from his mother. Ingeborg Benko, a retired kindergarten teacher, is a beneficiary of two of the Benkos’ private foundations. She drew up a new gift agreement with her son months ago.
The lawyer Dietmar Czernich, whose law firm helped with a lawsuit against the private foundations, expressed to the magazine the suspicion that Benko’s assets had probably flowed “into the undergrowth of private foundations and their subcompanies” that supported Benko’s family and himself. When asked, a lawyer from the Laura Private Foundation left the lawsuit without comment on the matter; he did not comment on a donation agreement.
This week it became known that the total claims against Benko have now grown to around 2.4 billion euros. The Signa Group had built up a large portfolio during the low interest rate phase, which also included the KaDeWe and Galeria department store groups. Benko had attracted investors from around the world with buildings such as the Elbtower in Hamburg and the Chrysler Building in New York. The collapse of his real estate empire – a complex network of around 1,000 companies – triggered a shock wave at the beginning of the year.
