Bela Rabelbauer

Bela Rabelbauer or Adalbert Rabelbauer (born May 19, 1934 in Magyarovár / Hungarian-Altenburg, today Mosonmagyaróvár , Hungary ) is an internationally active Vorarlberg businessman of Austro-Hungarian origin.

Life

Bela Rabelbauer was born in western Hungary as the son of a Styrian. He grew up in Vienna, East Tyrol and Hallstatt and attended the Hollabrunn seminary at short notice in 1948 . The young man tried his hand at various professions, including as an employee of the Vatican Radio , and from 1968 lived mostly in Fußach (Vorarlberg), where he founded various companies and acted internationally as a credit broker. From 1975 Rabelbauer was also active in the international fertilizer trade.

Rabelbauer was involved in a sensational party donation scandal in the early 1980s.

As an exponent of a Vorarlberg citizens' forum, the entrepreneur presented a group of high-ranking representatives of the ÖVP in the rooms of the Austrian parliament with a suitcase containing 4 million schillings in cash, the first part of a party donation totaling 10 million schillings (about 700,000 euros ), which was supposed to serve to "buy" two national council seats for the citizens' forum. A report by journalist Peter Pelinka in the Arbeiter-Zeitung (the central organ of the then sole governing SPÖ ) on August 29, 1980 revealed the transaction and the money was later repaid. Because of his role in the party donation affair, Rabelbauer received the nickname "The Man with the Suitcase" in the press, based on the then well-known TV crime series The Man with the Suitcase .

Bela Rabelbauer was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 1988 for serious fraud and a number of other financial crimes. After serving part of his sentence, he managed to flee abroad, but was arrested in Thailand in 1994 and extradited to Austria in 1996. Although he came into serious conflict with the law several times, Rabelbauer succeeded time and again in making an effective public appearance as a "millionaire juggler". He also wrote books in which he tried in part to portray himself as a "discoverer".

Publications

If I were finance minister ... self-published (Ed. "Aktion Wirtschaft Offensiv"). Vienna 1998; ISBN 3-9500759-0-9
My friends, my enemies. Revelations by a billionaire juggler . UHLEN-Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna 1987; ISBN 3-900466-33-5

literature

Krista Federspiel, Hans Weiss: Who? , Vienna 1988, especially p. 122ff., 156ff.

Web links

http://www.textfeld.ac.at/download/242.pdf

Individual evidence

↑ Mock Confirms AZ Revelations: Millions of Diamond Smugglers . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 29, 1980, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).

personal data
SURNAME	Rabelbauer, Bela
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Rabelbauer, Adalbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian entrepreneur and scandal bearer with high media interest
DATE OF BIRTH	May 19, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mosonmagyaróvár , Hungary

[1] Mock Confirms AZ Revelations: Millions of Diamond Smugglers . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 29, 1980, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).