VIENNA (Reuters) – Vienna corruption prosecutors raided the office of Raiffeisen Bank International Chief Executive Karl Sevelda on Monday in a breach of trust investigation, a spokesman said.
The raid took place after investigations resulting from an anonymous complaint into the sale of parts of family-owned Styrian commodity trading company DCM Decometal, allegedly at below their true value, the spokesman said on Tuesday.
The spokesman for the prosecutors’ office said four people including Sevelda were targets of the investigation, which was first reported by Austria’s Kronen Zeitung newspaper online earlier on Tuesday.
He said the bank itself was not under suspicion, and that the incidents that spurred the investigation took place mainly in 2012.
Sevelda, who took over as CEO of RBI in June after his predecessor was ousted in a scandal over private offshore property deals, was head of the Herbert Depisch foundation that controlled DCM from 1998 until 2011, RBI said.
“Since at the time related to the anonymous accusations I had neither a function on the Herbert Depisch private foundation’s board nor on the RBI management board, the suspicion is unfounded,” Sevelda said in a statement emailed by the bank.
The prosecutors’ office spokesman said: “There is a well-founded suspicion, otherwise we would not have taken this action.” He said papers and electronic data were seized from Sevelda’s office at the bank and would take time to examine.
DCM was not reachable by telephone on Tuesday evening and did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; editing by David Evans)
