Wolfgang Kulterer

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Wolfgang Kulterer (born December 17, 1953 in Hörzendorf , Sankt Veit an der Glan ) is an Austrian bank manager . He was Chairman of the Management Board and later, for a short time, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Carinthian Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank .

Life

Wolfgang Kulterer grew up in Sankt Veit an der Glan. He attended the lower level of the grammar school in Klagenfurt, then graduated from the higher federal teaching and research institute for agriculture, agricultural technology and food and biotechnology, the Francisco Josephinum , in Wieselburg in Lower Austria, where he passed the Matura in 1974 . This was followed by studies at the Vienna University of Economics , which he graduated in 1979. Kulterer began his professional career at Waagner-Biro in Vienna, while also writing his dissertation entitled Marketing for Capital Goods . In 1981 he was a trainee at Genossenschaftliche Zentralbank AG (since 1989 Raiffeisen Zentralbank ) in Vienna. After post-graduate studies at the Harvard Business School in Lausanne in 1986, he was sent to a local Carinthian Raiffeisen bank as restructuring manager. In 1988, Kulterer became managing director of RLB Carinthia.

In November 1992, Governor Christof Zernatto appointed him to the board of the Kärntner Landeshypotheken-Bank. Shortly beforehand, the bank had brought Grazer Wechselseiten Versicherung on board as a partner. The bank's total assets at this point in time amounted to 1.87 billion euros (25.8 billion schillings). The then FPÖ Jörg Haiders criticized the order because of Kulterer's provenance from the Raiffeisenbank.

Hypo was converted into a stock corporation, and Kulterer persistently pushed ahead with the expansion together with his board colleague Jörg Schuster. After the collapse of Yugoslavia , he soon relied on the successor states, and in 1995 the institute was renamed Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank. Expansion began initially with leasing companies in Slovenia and Croatia, where the Croatian Hypo subsidiary was launched in 1997. In quick succession, further investments were made and banking subsidiaries founded, with Kulterer always being the driving force. In 2005 a balance sheet total of EUR 24.23 billion was achieved.

Wolfgang Kulterer came under criticism in 2006 because of falsified balance sheets in connection with swap transactions at Hypo-Alpe Bank. He then had to vacate his position as chairman of the board and, despite the allegations, moved to the supervisory board at the instigation of governor Jörg Haider; Nevertheless, he wanted to continue to receive his executive board remuneration. After political pressure and media criticism, Kulterer finally surrendered all contractual claims through the board position, although his contract officially ran until 2011. An impeachment proceeding against Kulterer was pending due to improper accounting - which he tried to avoid by moving to the supervisory board.

Legal aftermath

On September 17, 2008 it became known that Kulterer, together with Günter Striedinger and Thomas Morgl, the Hypo-Alpe-Adria board member who was still in office, had to answer to court from October 28, 2008 for falsifying the balance sheet following the swap losses. During the trial, the prosecution expanded the charges against Kulterer to include falsification of evidence. A witness had testified that she should backdate a document on Kulterer's instructions. On November 18, 2008, Kulterer was finally sentenced to a fine of 140,000 euros (280 daily rates of 500 euros each).

On August 13, 2010, Kulterer was arrested. Two days later he was sentenced to pre- trial detention because of the risk of escape , blackout and committing a crime. There is suspicion of breach of trust , money laundering , balance sheet falsification, formation of a criminal organization and violations of financial criminal law. In November 2010 charges of breach of trust and false testimony were brought. Other serious allegations were also investigated against Kulturer. On March 29, 2011, Kulterer was acquitted in the first instance in a trial in which he was accused of embezzlement in connection with lending to the Styrian Spirit and to a private detective. The public prosecutor appealed for annulment . In the retrial on February 8, 2013, Kulterer was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

In the “Hypo III trial” on May 24, 2012, Kulterer was sentenced to three and a half years of unconditional imprisonment at the Klagenfurt Regional Court for breach of trust. On July 2, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld this ruling. Less than a month and a half later, on August 19, 2013, the written execution of the judgment by the Supreme Court was available. Thus Wolfgang Kulterer has to start the prison sentence within one month. The criminal proceedings pending since 2010 for breach of trust in connection with the granting of loans to the former Carinthian FPÖ politician and hotelier Heinz Anton Marolt were discontinued in January 2014. It is now open to the management board of Hypo Alpe Adria whether to submit a continuation of the criminal proceedings against Kulterer.

Between April 2015 and October 2016, Kulterer had to answer five other cases in court. In the "Paradiso", "Heli Kompanija", "Amfora Maris" and "Jacques Lemans" trials, the charges were each time loan breach. Kulterer was acquitted in all four cases. Then an outlier followed. In contrast to the first four trials, the “Skiper trial” - also an infidelity charge due to lending - ended for Kulterer and the co-defendant Striedinger with a sentence of four years and one month (additional penalty, thus a total of 10 years - that would be the range of punishment this offense exhausted).

In November 2019 he was finally sentenced in the Skiper trial to an additional sentence of two years, seven months and ten days.

It doesn't stop there. In January 2020, charges were again brought against the allegation of infidelity, this time about the Schloßhotel Velden.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Kulterer: The deep fall of the high horse , article in the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten of August 16, 2010
  2. ^ Entry in the general catalog of the Austrian Library Network
  3. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh, Ulla Schmid: Wolfgang Kulterer, former board member of Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank, in an interview , profil.at , November 27, 2010
  4. ↑ Hypo: Kulterer sees guilt at BayernLB , ktnv1.orf.at , May 19, 2010
  5. ^ ORF : The way for cultists on the supervisory board is paved , August 16, 2006
  6. ↑ ORF: Kulterer waives continued salary payments , August 2, 2006
  7. ^ ORF: Hypo boss Kulterer threatens impeachment , July 26, 2006
  8. ^ ORF: Board of Directors is taken out of the line of fire , July 30, 2006
  9. ↑ Kleine Zeitung : Hypo Alpe Adria: Trial of ex-board members begins on October 28 ( memento of February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), September 25, 2008
  10. ↑ Kleine Zeitung  : Poker um Hypo-Prozess ( Memento from September 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), September 29, 2008
  11. ↑ Kleine Zeitung  : Spy affair before Carinthian Hypo Trial ( Memento from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), October 3, 2008
  12. ^ ORF: Trial against ex-board members from October 28th, October 17th, 2008
  13. ↑ ORF: Knalleffekt: Kulterer in Hypo-Prozess loaded , 7 November 2008
  14. ^ ORF: Kulterer and Morgl plead guilty , November 18, 2008
  15. ^ ORF: Hypo process entered the next round , December 3, 2008
  16. ↑ ORF: Public Prosecutor sees risk of escape , August 15, 2010
  17. ^ ORF: Up to ten years imprisonment , August 15, 2010
  18. ↑ tagesschau.de : Ex-boss of the Carinthian scandal bank HGAA arrested , August 13, 2010
  19. ^ Public prosecutor's office charges ex-Alpe-Adria boss in: Spiegel Online from November 4, 2010
  20. ^ ORF: Three acquittals in the hypo process , March 29, 2011
  21. ^ ORF: Several years imprisonment in the Styrian Spirit trial , February 8, 2013
  22. ↑ Kleine Zeitung : Guilty verdicts in the Hypo III trial , May 24, 2012
  23. ^ ORF: Conviction for breach of trust , May 24, 2012
  24. ↑ ORF: OGH confirms prison sentences in Causa Hypo , July 2, 2013
  25. ↑ ORF: Soon custody for ex-Hypo boss Kulterer? , August 23, 2013
  26. ↑ The Hypo-Connection of the family of "Jungle Camp" star Larissa Marolt , Format , January 23, 2014
  27. ↑ Larissa Marolt, her father and the matter with the Hypo-Kredit ( memento from January 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , wirtschaftsblatt.at , January 23, 2014
  28. ↑ Hypo: Hotel loan proceedings closed , kaernten.orf.at , January 23, 2014
  29. ↑ WZ Online: Ex-Hypo boss Kulterer back in prison since Monday. Retrieved June 11, 2020 .
  30. ↑ 27 01 2020 at 18:19: Next charge against ex-Hypo boss Kulterer. January 27, 2020, accessed June 11, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Kulterer, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian bank manager
DATE OF BIRTH 17th December 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Hörzendorf , Sankt Veit an der Glan