Wolfgang Flöttl

Wolfgang Flöttl (born October 1, 1955 in Vienna ) is an Austrian investment banker with residence in New York and Bermuda .

education

After high school, Flöttl studied law for four years at the University of Vienna . He then studied for a year at the London School of Economics in London , then for two years at Harvard, where he also met his future wife Anne Eisenhower, the granddaughter of US President Dwight D. Eisenhower . He married her in 1988, divorced her in 1989 and remarried in 1991.

Career

In 1981, he joined Wall Street investment bank Kidder, Peabody & Co., where he became vice president in six years. In June 1987 he founded the investment firm Ross Capital Markets Ltd. In quick succession he founded other companies such as “International Asset Management” and “EBT Securities Ltd” (in which BAWAG was also involved), where, by the way, the current head of the local financial market supervisory authority was Managing Director. From 1993 to 1998 he was also a member of the supervisory board of Julius Meinl Investment GmbH and that of Julius Meinl International AG, the umbrella holding of the former food retail chain.

When his father Walter Flöttl was General Director of BAWAG, he was authorized for the first time in 1987 to conduct high-risk currency speculations with the bank's money. However, these had to be discontinued at a profit in 1994 after the public reacted indignantly to transactions of this kind. After Helmut Elsner took office as General Director of BAWAG in 1995, business relationships were resumed, which allegedly made a profit until October 1998, but then ended with a loss of USD 600 million as the US dollar rapidly depreciated against the yen . At the end of 1999, Wolfgang Flöttl was again commissioned by BAWAG to invest in Uni-Bonds through his company Pace Capital Limited. But this business also ended with a loss of 430 million euros. These loss-making deals for BAWAG remained secret for a long time and only came to light in the course of the BAWAG affair in 2006.

According to Vranitzky , Wolfgang Flöttl hired former Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky as a consultant for the introduction of the euro in 1999 and paid him around 72,000 euros for it. In a Zeit im Bild -2 interview on ORF on September 20, 2006, Flöttl said, however, that Helmut Elsner had urged him to transfer the money to Franz Vranitzky; Since Flöttl did not invest in the euro area, Vranitzky did not provide any advice. There is speculation whether transfers to BAWAG via foundations were also used to finance the SPÖ's political parties . However, these claims have not yet been proven.

BAWAG process

In the first Bawag trial on July 4, 2008, he was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, including 20 months on probation. The judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court in December 2010 and the proceedings were referred back to the first instance for renegotiation. In the second Bawag trial, on December 18, 2012, the accusation of infidelity was finally acquitted. The judgment is final on May 15, 2013. In the course of the Paradise Papers affair, however, it became known that, according to the company register of the Caribbean island of Aruba, he had seven companies there and only gradually dissolved them in 1999 and 2000, i.e. only ten years after the BAWAG funds were (allegedly) lost .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ All prominent witnesses in the Bawag trial
2. ↑ Public prosecutors want to work in peace  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Shrill election campaign tones in parliament  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ DiePresse.com
5. ^ OGH dismantled Bawag judgment on derstandard.at of December 23, 2010. Retrieved on May 15, 2013 . 
6. ↑ BAWAG trial: All acquittals are legally binding on orf.at from May 15, 2013. Accessed May 15, 2013 . 
7. ^ Previously unknown companies on orf.at of November 5, 2017. Accessed on November 6, 2017 . 

Web links

• ORF, March 11, 2007: First details on million dollar deals