The German department store chain of the Austrian real estate magnate René Benko is flourishing: The public prosecutor in Essen has initiated investigations against people from the management of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof. According to the newspaper, the investigation was confirmed by the authorities. The investigators would investigate the allegation, according to which the group should have been insolvent in January 2020 and not in March. Weeks later, namely at the beginning of April, the group had filed for bankruptcy in self-administration.
As an indication, the report cites the fact that the department store chain has stopped paying social security contributions in several cases from January 2020. The company is also charged with not having made settlement offers negotiated in court in February. In individual cases, it is up to 90,000 euros for long-term employees.
Thousands of employees lost in the course of the bankruptcy, many of them have not received any severance pay.
State aid for the group
Meanwhile, according to information from the dpa, the German government has agreed to help the ailing department store group Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof in the corona pandemic. The German Ministry of Economics and Finance agreed on a stabilization measure in favor of the last German department store group in the amount of up to 460 million euros, said a person familiar with the process on Wednesday. Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is owned by Signa Holding owned by Austrian investor Rene Benko.
It is a subordinate loan in the corresponding amount, for which the group would have to pay appropriate interest. The German government wants to make a contribution to secure the jobs of the more than 17,000 employees and to bridge the current difficult situation for the company. Galeria boss Miguel Müllenbach said in a letter to the employees that the loan would secure the necessary liquidity in the coming weeks and months of the pandemic: “We are very grateful for that.”
According to insiders, the group had already unsuccessfully sought state aid at the beginning of the Corona crisis in the spring and then fled into a protective shield procedure under self-administration. After the end of the bankruptcy proceedings in September, the company had relied on a fresh start – Galeria was now free of debt and better positioned than ever before, it said at the time. The current lockdown with the officially ordered closings of its branches is also affecting the department store giant, which is in fierce competition with online retailers such as Amazon and Zalando. The general works council of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof had asked politicians to enter into a dialogue about “sustainable solutions”.
