The establishment of a villa in Italy used by the Immobilientycoon René Benko comes under the hammer in the course of the bankruptcy of the Signa Holding. The 1,712 posts on the website of the Aurena auction house give an insight into the world of the Signa Group and its founder Benko.
The inventory of the property includes, for example, metal sculptures of women’s figures, seating furniture in baroque style and a black splendor toilet with gold decoration. Interesting for collectors: inside could be a guest book in which Tina Turner, Niki Lauda and Silvio Berlusconi have immortalized themselves.
The call prices of the online auction ended on July 14th are between 3,800 euros for a video surveillance system and 1 euro for a toilet brush. According to Aurena, the villa with a helicopter landing site was rented by the Signa Holding-however, the name Benko is on a door sign. The building with the twelve hectare property is not auctioned at this auction.
Benko in custody
The 48-year-old Benko last lived in Innsbruck. The Austrian has been in custody in Vienna since January. Investigators focus: Inside, transactions between Signa Societies, Benko and Private Foundations are in its environment.
The Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) in Vienna suspects Benko to have assets before authorities, creditors: inside and insolvency administrators: to have hidden inside. His lawyers have denied the allegations in the past.
Benko had built up a nested company network in the low interest rate phase. For example, he invested in the Galeria Warehouse Group, the Luxury department store KaDeWe and the Hamburg Elbtower project. In addition to internal problems, Signa was brought down from rising interest rates, energy prices and construction costs. Creditors demand 7.7 billion euros from Signa Holding.