Also wife in court
Creditors harmed – Signa founder Benko sentenced again
12/10/2025 – 5:53 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
In October, ex-billionaire René Benko was sentenced to prison for fraud. Now a new verdict has been issued against the former real estate mogul.
The Austrian ex-billionaire René Benko has been convicted for the second time of damaging his creditors. The Innsbruck regional court imposed a suspended sentence of 15 months on the founder of the real estate and trading empire Signa. His wife Nathalie Benko, who was also accused, was acquitted.
The court saw it as only partially proven that René Benko had kept valuable watches away from his creditors. Depending on the amount of damage, the so-called fraudulent Krida in Austria is punishable by up to ten years in prison.
René Benko was sentenced to two years in prison for the same offense in October. As soon as this first judge’s verdict becomes final, a total sentence will be formed from both verdicts. However, the two penalties are not simply added together.
At the beginning of the trial, the defense tried to pick apart the charges. The accusation made by the public prosecutor’s office is not proven and is essentially “hocus pocus,” according to the investor’s lawyer, Norbert Wess. The investigation was “incredibly one-sided,” said Nathalie Benko’s lawyer, Michael Hohenauer. There are plausible explanations for the events.
The public prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, stated that the couple had deposited the money and eleven expensive watches in a safe around Benko’s insolvency as sole traders. The purchase of the safe, which was placed at the wife’s relatives’ home, was organized by 42-year-old Nathalie Benko. That’s why she contributed to the crime and thus to the damage to creditors, said the prosecution. A former Benkos security employee told investigators about the safe.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, Benko’s statement that he had given four watches to his two sons, then aged six and eleven, for Christmas 2021 was not credible. Christmas photos from 2021 show gifts appropriate to the age of the children, said the senior public prosecutor. “There were no expensive watches or cufflinks.” It should also be asked why the money and items were not kept in the Benkos’ highly secured villa.
The defense argued that watch gifts of this size were not uncommon among very wealthy people. Benko was at the peak of his success back then.
The insolvency administrator Andreas Grabenweger pointed out in his witness statement that there were inconsistencies in René Benko’s list of assets. It has never happened to him that a debtor declares that he has zero cash. That alone made him suspicious, said Grabenweger. Press reports also mentioned the investor’s valuable watch collection. Instead, Benko only presented him with three watches.
The two proceedings are only a small excerpt of the allegations that the Vienna Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) is investigating. Further charges are considered certain. The holding company of the complex real estate and trading group Signa slipped into bankruptcy in November 2023. Benko has been in custody since January 2025.
