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Austrian property tycoon René Benko was arrested, as criminal prosecutors in Vienna accused him of making inaccurate statements during the insolvency proceedings of his Signa property holding in an attempt to embezzle assets.

Law enforcement authorities said BANKS was arrested Thursday because he was considered a flight risk and prosecutors were concerned he might tamper with evidence. They also accused him of forging a document.

In an unrelated investigation, Italian police in December issued an arrest warrant for Benko over alleged irregularities in his business in the South Tyrol region. Viennese criminal prosecutors revealed on Thursday that they have formed a joint investigation team with prosecutors in Berlin and Munich to facilitate cross-border investigations.

Benko’s arrest comes more than a year after his Signa conglomerate collapsed, leaving insurance companies, banks and other investors in Austria and Germany facing billions of euros in losses.

Prosecutors accused Benko of being the most beneficial owner of the Innsbruck-based family foundation named after his daughter Laura. The Financial Times last year reported that a Signa Group company transferred more than €300mn to two entities controlled by that foundation before the insolvency.

Austrian prosecutors say Benko did not disclose his control of the entity, called the Laura Foundation, during his personal insolvency proceedings.

“By doing this, he hid the assets and excluded the wealth stored in the foundation from law enforcement authorities, administrators and creditors,” said the prosecutors of a statementpointing to evidence gathered in a multi-month investigation that included phone surveillance.

Benko is also accused of fabricating evidence by retrospectively creating an invoice to keep authorities from getting three valuable guns, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors also alleged that Benko tricked Signa’s shareholders into participating in a capital increase by pretending that his family’s foundation would also put up new funds, adding that he disguised the payments to external investors as his own contributions by creating a complex chain of money transfers between. different legal entities.

Benko is also accused of selling Villa Eden Gardone, a luxury mansion on Italy’s Lake Garda, to a Liechtenstein-based foundation in a sham transaction that prosecutors see as potential embezzlement.

He is also accused of defrauding a foreign sovereign wealth fund that he convinced to invest in a property project next to Munich’s central train station. Most of the funds were then used illegally for other purposes, prosecutors added.

A lawyer for Benko did not immediately respond to an FT request for comment.