Saturday, July 5, 2008

Former Austrian bank boss jailed

The former head of one of Austria's biggest banks, Bank Fuer Arbeit und Wirtschaft (Bawag), has been jailed for nine-and-a-half years for fraud.

Helmut Elsner, 73, Bawag's ex-general director, was one of nine people who were convicted in a case linked to the collapse of US brokerage Refco.

Judge Claudia Bandion-Ortner found the defendants responsible for 1.4bn euros ($1.9bn; £1.1bn) of losses at Bawag.

All had denied charges of breach of trust, fraud and false accounting.

The prison term was just short of the 10-year maximum for his crimes.

As well as his prison sentence Elsner was ordered to repay Bawag 6.8m euros in pension benefits.

Witnesses called during the year-long trial included a former Austrian chancellor, an ex-finance minister and a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank.

Bankruptcy filing

Bawag had been under investigation for lending ex-Refco chief executive Phillip Bennett several hundred million dollars before the US brokerage filed for bankruptcy.

Elsner was the key defendant in the case in Austria, and had fled to France in 2006 when Bawag's difficulties became known.

Bennett was sentenced to 16 years in prison in the US on Thursday.

The other eight defendants were made up of Bawag board members, the ex-supervisory board chief, the former secretary general, an auditor and an independent hedge fund manager.

They received total fines of more than 72m euros, as well as sentences ranging from an 18-month suspended sentence to five years in prison, for a variety of crimes including breach of trust, falsification of accounts, and aiding and abetting a breach of trust.

All but one of them said they would appeal against their convictions.


Digg Technorati del.icio.us Stumbleupon Reddit Blinklist Furl Spurl Yahoo Simpy

0 comments: