Court convicts René Benko of fraud over €5 million guarantee, adds two years

The verdict

The Innsbruck regional court found René Benko guilty of serious fraud on Thursday, 5 November 2026, after a two-day trial. According to the court, the victim was the family foundation of industrialist Hans Peter Haselsteiner, which lost €5 million. Benko received an unconditional additional sentence of two years in prison. The court reached its decision after close to two hours of deliberation and announced it shortly after 5 p.m. The ruling is not yet final, and Benko, who is 49, rejected the accusations.

The guarantee at the centre of the case

The prosecution's case rested on a notarised guarantee that Benko gave Haselsteiner on 6 November 2023, three weeks before Signa Holding filed for insolvency. In 2022 the Haselsteiner family foundation had subscribed to shares in Signa Development for just under €5 million, with payment to come from half of a dividend of roughly €10 million owed to the foundation. That dividend was deferred and never paid. When Sportscheck, a Signa subsidiary, urgently needed €5 million in autumn 2023, the foundation transferred the money against Benko's personal promise to repay it by the end of June 2024. Benko was personally insolvent by March 2024. The senior prosecutor, a woman, argued that the guarantee served only to deceive and that Benko never seriously intended to pay the money back.

The defence and the witness testimony

Benko's lawyer, Norbert Wess, argued that Haselsteiner had merely settled an overdue debt, since the purchase price for the shares had fallen due at the end of 2022, and that there had been neither deception nor loss. He summed up the defence in sharp terms:

“Put in exaggerated terms, this is a murder without a body.”

Haselsteiner, who appeared as a witness, stressed the importance of the guarantee. He said he had been asked for €5 million and would not have provided it without Benko's assurance. The court dismissed the link the defence drew between the guarantee and the old share purchase as nonsense, and said Benko must have known he could not repay the money. The court described the case as relatively clear.

Acquittal on the second charge

The court acquitted Benko on the second count, fraudulent bankruptcy, which concerned a rifle worth €80,000 with gold initials 'RB'. Prosecutors alleged that he had hidden the weapon from creditors, but the court did not find that proven.

Sentencing and what follows

The two additional years are added to the 30 months handed down in September 2026 for damaging creditors, a sentence Benko received in an earlier trial. Combined, the terms come to four and a half years, according to the reporting. Further investigations against the former billionaire are ongoing.

September 2026 (creditor damage)2.5

5 November 2026 (fraud, additional)2

September 2026 (creditor damage)

2.5 years

5 November 2026 (fraud, additional)

2 years

Data from the article text

Background on Signa

Benko built the Signa real estate group over roughly twenty years into a company regarded as a top address. It entered brick-and-mortar retail through the German department store chains Kaufhof and Karstadt. Rising interest rates, lost bank trust and management errors then drove the group into insolvency. Benko and Haselsteiner had been closely connected in business for years, with Haselsteiner having been chief of the construction group Strabag.