VIENNA, (Reuters) – Prosecutors have found secret accounts in which the late Austrian right-wing leader Joerg Haider hid as much as 45 million euros ($59 million), the Austrian magazine Profil reported yesterday.
Prosecutors from Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein found 12 shell companies whose Liechtenstein bank accounts Haider had access to, Profil reported. The accounts currently still have 5 million euros of deposits, it said.
The money was found in a probe by Austrian and German authorities into the near-collapse of Austrian bank Hypo Group Alpe Adria, once owned by the Austrian region of Carinthia, which Haider governed until he died in a car crash in 2008.
Haider’s Carinthia and a group of mainly German and Austrian investors sold a majority stake in Hypo to Germany’s BayernLB [BAYLB.UL] in 2007 in a deal that ultimately proved disastrous. Hypo had to be nationalised last year to prevent a collapse.
Prosecutors are investigating whether former managers, shareholders and business partners of Hypo lined their pockets at the expense of both Hypo and BayernLB.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia declined to comment on the Profil report.
The magazine said investigators were still trying to find out where the money had come from and where it had gone. It said that three people still had access to the accounts.
