The accusations of “serious crimes”, which the Viennese lawyer Stephan Briem had reported to the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA), had turned out to be baseless. “The WKStA also rejected the continuation motions, a court spokeswoman confirmed.
As reported, Briem had reported the company founder Faramarz Ettehadieh, other managers and Cordial’s long-term auditor. They would have kept the Imperial subsidiary Cordial, which had reported negative equity since 2001, alive only with capital shifts. Imperial waived claims of 37.6 million euros in favor of Cordial and to the detriment of the creditors, so the allegation.
Imperial itself has developed real estate projects for decades. Investors financed this as atypical shareholders. After the Supreme Court qualified them as lenders in 2017 to receive the interest, the Imperial business model collapsed. Both the real estate company and the Cordial holiday hotel group went bankrupt. The Imperial creditors received 20 percent of their claims in the insolvency proceedings. In the holiday club subsidiary Cordial, the creditors were compensated 100 percent because hotels were sold well.
“Existence is threatened”
In terms of civil law, however, the investors are not finished yet. For Briem, the allegations have not turned out to be unfounded, but as not yet criminally prosecutable, he reads from the expert report of the investigating authorities. Several clients are convinced that Ettehadieh’s approach as board member or managing director, his chief financial officer and other managers was inadmissible. The auditor had also reported internally for 17 years that the stock (the Cordial) was threatened. In the (official) final report, a lapidary formulation was used to avoid responsibility: “Society is dependent on it being supplied with liquidity.”
Several (identical) proceedings are pending in the first instance, reports Briem. An expert is currently commissioned to explain the responsibilities. Briem expects a first judgment in the first half of 2023.
The group of companies expects the eleven lawsuits against the Cordial managers to be rejected because the creditors have been compensated 100 percent. They are also convinced that the lawsuits against the Imperial stakeholders would be dismissed.
Source: Nachrichten
