Police raid Austrian HQ of Selfridges owner Signa
Austrian police have raided the headquarters of René Benko’s Signa Group, one of Europe’s biggest luxury real estate investors.
Innsbruck-based Signa has a €24bn property portfolio that includes high end departments stores Selfridges in London and KaDeWe in Berlin, as well as prime hotels and property in Zurich, Vienna and Munich and New York’s Chrysler Building.
Police searched Signa headquarters on Tuesday, confiscating laptops, hard drives, documents and mobile phones, in a swoop connected to a sprawling investigation by Austria’s state prosecutor into corruption at the top of the government.
Tuesday’s raid follows an announcement on Tuesday from the Austrian prosecutor for economic crime and corruption (WKStA) that one of Kurz’s closest political confidants, Thomas Schmid, a top finance ministry official, had turned state witness earlier this year and had provided investigators with more than 15 full days of testimony.
A copy of the WKStA warrant ordering the raid against Signa and Benko was obtained by the Financial Times and confirmed as genuine by government officials. News of the raid was first reported by Austria’s state broadcaster ORF and Der Standard newspaper.
The WKStA warrant details dealings between Schmid and Benko, and alleges Benko sought to use aggressive accounting to avoid paying millions in taxes.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sam Jones
