Sonja Kohn

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Sonja Kohn (née Türk ; born August 5, 1948 in Vienna ) is an Austrian banker .

Life

Sonja Kohn was born as the daughter of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and grew up in Vienna. In the 1970s, she and her husband Erwin Kohn began to work in the import-export business, which also took them to Milan . In 1985 they moved to New York , where they lived in the Orthodox Jewish community of Monsey .

In the USA Sonja Kohn and her husband founded Eurovaleur Inc. , of which she is president. Sonja Kohn became known in New York as “Austria's woman on Wall Street ”. In the 1990s she returned to Europe, where she worked with Gerhard Randa (Bank Austria).

In 1994 she founded the Medici finance company , in which she held three quarters of the shares and was on the board of directors. After the Madoff scandal, the bank was closed in 2009 and converted into a company.

Until 2006, Kohn had a consultancy contract with the Vienna Stock Exchange for international exchange cooperation.

Madoff case

In December 2010, Sonja Kohn became involved in the affair of the American billionaire fraudster Bernard L. Madoff . She was falsely accused for a while of being Madoff's main business partner in Europe. In Austria, too, the judiciary was investigating suspected fraud in this matter.

Madoff's bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard sued Sonja Kohn, the Bank Medici and a few dozen other people in New York for damages in the amount of 19.6 billion dollars (around 15 billion euros) - the largest single sum to date as a result of this scandal. The lawsuit was withdrawn.

On October 18, 2013, Sonja Kohn won a landmark case in London that Picard had brought against her. Picard had sued Kohn for payments made by Madoff for her services. The judge of the London High Court spoke of "baseless allegations", dropped the case and came to the conclusion that the payments to Kohn had been "nothing more than adequate compensation for the services lawfully rendered by her". Kohn had "acted completely honestly."

The judge also held that Kohn was also a victim of Madoff's fraud and had lost his own fortune. Her family lost $ 11.5 million, according to the verdict. It was bitter to see how a plaintiff could bring completely false and unjust allegations into the world - "and how the media spread these allegations as if they were the truth and not simply the claims of a party," said Kohn.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (November 4, 2004) Wirtschaftsblatt: About the person - Sonja Kohn (accessed on March 22, 2009) ( Memento from December 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Application 2011
  3. ↑ (January 10, 2014) derstandard.at: Public prosecutor melts the Madoff case
  4. ↑ Application 2011
  5. ↑ Setting the bankruptcy trustee
  6. ↑ (October 18, 2013) derstandard.at: Sonja Kohn won the procedure in London
  7. ↑ (October 18, 2013) Reuters: UK court dismisses case against directors of Madoff unit
  8. ↑ (October 18, 2013) kurier.at
  9. ↑ (November 17, 2013) Sonja Kohn: acquittal in the Madoff fraud: handelszeitung.ch

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kohn, Sonja
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Türk, Sonja (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian banker
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna