Mrs Helena Aluta-OltyanWie ein Gangster Ehepaar, einen Bankrott herbeiführte, wo Geschäfte mit Freunden, eigenen Firmen zum Standard Programm wurde, wie überall bei der Balkan Mafia.
DATUM: Das Alpine-Bau-Debakel am Balkan
Wien - Das Monatsmagazin DATUM berichtet in seiner Onlineausgabe (www.datum.at) von den Hintergründen der größten Insolvenz der Zweiten Republik. Die Alpine Bau GmbH, ehemals zweitgrößtes österreichisches Bauunternehmen, meldete am 19. Juni 2013 nach 48-jährigem Bestehen Insolvenz an. Die Alpine hatte zuvor eine halsbrecherische Expansion in neue Märkte unternommen und bei Großprojekten enorme Verluste hinnehmen müssen. Neben Deutschland und Polen sticht vor allem der Balkan hervor: DATUM enthüllt ein Sittenbild nachlässigen Managements und dubioser Geldflüsse sowie die Geschichte einer Seilschaft von Alpine-Managern, die unter der Führung von Ex-Alpine-Miteigentümer Dietmar Aluta-Oltyan und seiner Ehefrau Helena auf die Balkan-Niederlassungen der Alpine beträchtlichen Einfluss ausübten.
Ein Prüfbericht der Wirtschaftsprüfungsagentur BDO, der DATUM vorliegt, kritisiert die mangelnde Aufsicht und Kontrolle der Dependancen am Balkan durch die Zentrale in Salzburg, wo Dietmar Aluta-Oltyan als “starker Mann” auch ins operative Geschäft eingriff, obwohl er neben seiner Miteigentümerschaft nominell nur als Aufsichtsratschef der übergeordneten Holding fungierte. Die Intransparenz der Balkangeschäfte führte dazu, dass exorbitante Verluste nicht rechtzeitig erkannt wurden.
DATUM liegen zudem interne Dokumente vor, die dubiose Geldflüsse im Umfeld der Alpine-Niederlassungen in Mazedonien und Albanien aufzeigen. In Mazedonien konnten Alpine-Mitarbeiter über Jahre hinweg Aufträge an Firmen vergeben, die sie selbst besaßen oder denen sie nahestanden. Über Scheinrechnungen und Beratungsstudien flossen innerhalb von zwei Jahren mindestens sechs Millionen Euro in dunkle Kanäle.
Die einjährige investigative Recherche ist das Ergebnis einer Kooperation zwischen DATUM und dem Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
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A year-long investigation reveals the inside story of how construction giant Alpine Bau’s breakneck expansion into the Balkans played a major part in its destruction.
BIRN Vienna, Skopje, Tirana, Belgrade, London In the early afternoon of June 18, 2013, more than a 100 senior managers at construction giant Alpine Bau settled at desks in offices across the world for a mass conference call.
Austria’s second largest construction corporation had built some of the biggest infrastructure projects of our time – everything from football stadia for World Cups to European highways in the Balkans and the controversial arena for Azerbaijan’s lavish Eurovision Song Contest.
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| Baku Crystal Hall Photo: Wikipedia |
The orders from the Austrian headquarters were clear: Close all construction sites, mothball the machinery, secure documentation and inform the 15,000 employees. Alpine Bau’s myriad subsidiaries would not receive any payments until further notice.
Finally, a manager based in the Balkans asked the question: “Should we stay where we are, or flee?”
The drama of the question was matched by the dire state of Alpine Bau GmbH’s projects abroad: 3.2bn euros of debt, 15,000 creditors and a worldwide trail of unfinished construction sites.
During the past year, the Austrian magazine DATUM and journalists from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), have been investigating Alpine Bau’s abrupt collapse, obtaining confidential documents and conducting more than 100 interviews and off-the-record briefings from senior former staff in six countries.
Official records and testimonies from former staff paint a damning picture of systemic management failures, dubious loans and contracts, and suspicious transfers of money to off-shore accounts.
At the heart of the collapse was the Balkans – accounting for half of the firm’s losses while representing a much smaller proportion of the business – and the man who is accused of leading the disastrous expansion there, Dietmar Aluta-Oltyan, whose power went virtually unchecked despite holding no managerial role.
An onslaught of legal action has followed the bankruptcy with allegations of embezzlement, accounting fraud, bankruptcy offences and failure to apply for insolvency in due time, all currently being investigated by prosecutors. There is, however, no indication that Mr Aluta-Oltyan is among those being probed.
Until today, only fragments of news have emerged from the bankruptcy hearings in Vienna, which remain at least one year away from beginning disbursing funds to unpaid contractors.
Disproportionate losses in the Balkans
In contrast to its overseas operations, Alpine Bau had been making a profit at home in Austria.
While the bankruptcy was sudden, almost 80 per cent of the Austrian workforce found jobs within a few weeks as outstanding projects were quickly picked up by competitors.
Alpine Bau was brought down by its foreign debts, despite having pumped more than 1.3bn euros into its overseas subsidiaries and branches over a decade, a September 2014 report by accounting and tax consultancy firm BDO concluded.
The largest yearly profits the company ever recorded from its overseas operations totalled just 36m euros, and that was back in 2005, according to the firm’s 2011 annual report.
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| Alpine buildigs Photo by: FOLTIN Jindrich / WirtschaftsBlatt / picturedesk.com |
Alpine Bau’s liquidators commissioned the BDO report to find out what had gone wrong.
It claims Alpine Bau operated outside of Austria without sufficient controls and points to its rapid expansion in the Balkans – alongside Germany and Poland – as key to its downfall. Of the 1.3 billion euro lost investment in foreign projects, nearly half was funnelled to Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia. This was a disproportionally large amount considering the construction work in these countries.
The Balkans was seen by outsiders as the jewel in the corporation’s crown. Alpine Bau had pioneered large projects in the region since 2001 –becoming arguable the region’s biggest builder – but the millions invested were being progressively flushed away.
Spiralling highway costs in Serbia
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| Beska bridge Photo by: Zoran Zestic, Ministry of Transport |
Alpine Bau had to settle for a fee of 54m euros after arbitration and protracted arguments with the Serbian government and state-owned road firm Putevi Srbija, documents secured under Freedom of Information laws confirm.
Putevi Srbija is now pursuing a claim against Alpine Bau for, coincidentally, 54m euros for unfinished and poor work on the bridge and other projects.
Alpine Bau was commissioned in 2010 to construct part of the pan-European highway between the Serbian city of Nis and the Bulgarian border but the scheme did not progress.
An internal report seen by DATUM and BIRN predicted losses of 45m euros in 2012 for this project alone.
And according to Serbian prosecution documents, part of the highway was built with construction material unlawfully sourced from Zvonko Veselinovic, a controversial protest leader and businessman from troubled northern Kosovo.
Millions ‘missing’ in Macedonia
Not only did large-scale construction contracts in Macedonia fail to turn a profit, but millions of euros were spent on suspect loans and contracts, according to a KPMG inspection report dated June 2012 and an internal audit dated June 2013, obtained by reporters.
The documents reveal a network of firms, many owned by or closely linked to employees, received “dubious loans” and contracts. The auditor singles out Gjoko Dinev, the general manager of Alpine Bau GmbH Skopje from 2009, for particular criticism.
Consultancy contracts worth more than 3m euros were awarded between 2010 and 2012 to a company owned by some of Alpine’s Macedonian employees. This despite the fact the company did not have any employees and did not produce any evidence the work was carried out, according to the internal report.
More than 6m euros of suspect payments are outlined in the report, amounting to almost one third of Alpine Bau GmbH Skopje branch’s entire revenue for 2012.
“Behind every single contract and every payment was a [legitimate] service, at least during my time as general manager,” insists Dinev.
When asked who authorised payments, Dinev named Croatian Ivica Borosak, who was listed as the second general manager in Macedonia and head of the Alpine branch in Croatia. Borosak failed to return our calls and emails.
After Alpine went bust, Borosak and Dinev were employed by firms owned by
Mrs Helena Aluta-Oltyan, the wife of Dietmar Aluta-Oltyan, a former shareholder and managing director of Alpine Bau.
Mrs Aluta-Oltyan took an active role in Alpine’s Balkan activities – even describing herself as the ‘Alpine representative for the Balkans’ – although insiders have said her true position in the company was far from clear. She has failed to respond to our request for an interview or written response.[Link to the “Balkan Family”]
Albania: Money transferred to tax havens
In Albania, 1.4m euros was transferred during 2012 to a mysterious Cypriot company called Windforce Estate Limited, which had been owned by another offshore firm registered in the Marshall Islands. Ownership was later signed over to employees of a Cypriot law firm.
The transfers were questioned in a Deloitte report, which was still employed as the auditor in Alpine Bau branch in Tirana in 2013, and obtained by DATUM and BIRN.
The payments to Windforce throughout 2012 were for work including “acting and advising, material assistance in any meetings, discussions and briefings”, according to invoices obtained by reporters.
The bills were addressed to Tirana managers Manfred Deppe and Amadeo Garcia, but auditors were unable to find any other documents related to the payments, including a contract between Alpine Bau and Windforce referenced on the invoices.
This consultancy work was in connection to two highways Alpine Bau Tirana Branch and its Greek partner AEGEK were building, after Alpine won the contract in 2008. The projects were paid for from EU and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development funds.
But the roads, between the towns of Vlore, Tepelene and Levan, spiralled in cost, forcing the government to return to donors for more money. Even then, the projects were dogged by technical problems and sparked violent protests by villagers whose land was being built on.
One section remains unfinished almost five years after its estimated completion date of 2010.
Deloitte complained the consultancy firm Windforce had provided no proof the work was carried out and failed Alpine Bau in Albania’s audit for the financial year 2012 as a result.
The auditors noted that the recipient of the payments and sole shareholder of Windforce had died in a Greek hospital in April 2013 and as a result was unable to provide further details of what services it had provided.
It is not known who the true owner of Windforce Estate was as those currently listed as secretary, director and shareholders are employees of a legal office in Cyprus – a common and legal ploy employed in the notorious tax haven to ensure anonymity.
A former senior member of Alpine Bau Tirana branch, who said she had sight of every contract being signed, revealed: "I worked for years for Alpine and I'm shocked by the amount of money we paid Windforce Estate Limited as I had never seen any contract or relevant document related to this company."
While cash was being funnelled out of the firm to tax havens, sub-contractors were left with multi-million pound debts.
Construction firm Alban Tirana is owed 2.5m euros after successfully taking Alpine Bau Tirana Branch to court claiming the Austrian firm unfairly dismissed it in favour of AEGEK. The firm has not received a penny and fears it will never do so now.
Emails exchanged between the manager of Alpine Bau Tirana branch and the Albanian liquidators during May 2014 and obtained by DATUM and BIRN show Alpine in Albania was not able to file for bankruptcy months after its subsidiaries went bust in 2013.
In the end, Alpine Albania didn’t have enough funds to pay the fees to file for bankruptcy.
Fatal management failings
In the BDO report commissioned by Alpine Bau’s liquidators, the authors claim the firm’s rapid expansion overseas was “sales-oriented and not profit-oriented” and that this was driven “by long-time co-owner and ‘strongman’ of Alpine Bau, Mr Aluta-Oltyan, and the Spanish majority owner FCC”.
“The strategy of gaining market share and the consequent entry into new markets had a devastating impact on the profitability of the Alpine Group,” the report concludes.
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| Dietmar Aluta-Oltyan Photo by: Michel Heidi / Verlagsgruppe News / picturedesk.com |
The 70-year-old joined the company in 1968 and worked his way up to become a shareholder and managing director.
Around the turn of the millennium, under his leadership, Alpine began to expand abroad. But his co-shareholders Georg Pappas, the founder of Alpine, and engineer Otto Mierl kept a tight rein on their more adventurous colleagues.
The tide appeared to be turning against the ambitious Aluta-Oltyan when he was convicted of corruption in Germany in February 2006, related to a fee he paid to secure the construction contract for Bayern Munich’s landmark Allianz Arena.
He was given a two-year suspended sentence and a 1.8m euro fine, having already stepped down as managing director of Alpine Bau, the construction arm of the group.
Aluta-Oltyan then took up the job as executive director of Alpine Holding, the umbrella firm which managed Alpine Bau, its biggest company, but was ordered not to meddle in the construction firm’s work
But at that time, Spanish construction firm FCC snapped up shares from the more cautiously minded Pappas and Mierl in the last quarter of 2006, emerging as majority owners. This left the path clear for Aluta-Oltyan to unleash a turbo-charged expansion into the Balkans and beyond, despite the fact he no longer held an executive role, say company insiders.
The BDO audit reinforces this view, describing Aluta-Oltyan as the “strongman” of Alpine Bau, who was “active on the executive level without any checks and balances worth mentioning”.
“The management level responsible for the implementation of proper controls was dominated by Mr Aluta-Oltyan through to the beginning of 2012,” the report reads.
“This was the case despite the fact that he was not formally functioning as general manager nor was he on the supervisory board of Alpine Bau GmbH.
“This leadership style, tailored to one individual, and the accompanying corporate culture contributed decisively to the identified deficiencies in terms of structures, controls and transparency.”
A lawyer for Mr Aluta-Oltyan said in a statement that their client was bound to commercial confidentiality and could not answer our detailed questions about his “strongman” position and role leading Alpine Bau into foreign markets.
The lawyer added: “In the name of our client I would like to point out that numerous remarks and assumptions on which the questions are based are in part evidently incorrect. The image that is conveyed of my client is therefore incorrect as well.”
FCC, sole shareholders at the time of Alpine Bau's bankruptcy, did not respond to our requests for a comment.
‘Balkan Chaos’ warnings
From 2008 there were increasing complaints in Salzburg about colleagues in the south, insiders have told BIRN and DATUM.
“It was chaos in the Balkans,” says one well placed ex-employee at Alpine Bau in Salzburg.
“For instance, we had 16 different payroll systems, nobody knew who worked where exactly and what their contracts looked like.”
Half a dozen ex-managers of Alpine Bau confirmed independently from each other that Balkan subsidiaries enjoyed greater freedom and that Aluta-Oltyan took a personal interest in the firm’s foreign business.
Senior managers in Salzburg knew about some of the problems with the larger foreign projects as they were reported up the chain, but it’s not clear who was aware of the scale of losses.
Representatives of the majority stakeholder FCC were repeatedly informed of communication problems with the Balkan subsidiaries, according to sources close to the events.
“We told the Spaniards that it cannot continue the way it is,” says one ex-manager.
According to BDO, Alpine Bau was already effectively insolvent by October 2010.
The fact that no one had noticed earlier remains one of the great mysteries of the bankruptcy, although the auditors do criticise their internationally renowned peers Deloitte, who did not spot the problem when signing off the accounts in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
A spokeswoman for Deloitte Austria said she was confident that it had performed “diligent and proper audit work”.
“This [BDO] report is made on behalf of, and paid for by, the liquidator of Alpine and therefore not an objective opinion of an independent expert,” she added.
Banks had loaned Alpine Bau hundreds of millions of euros from 2010 onwards, 180m of which was guaranteed by the Austrian taxpayer. The public had also snapped up 290m euros of bonds in 2011 and 2012 as the firm attempted to inject fresh capital into the business.
Aluta-Oltyan left Alpine Bau in the spring of 2012, selling his 19.3 per cent holding to the majority stakeholder FCC for 52.6 million euros.
Losses uncovered by new auditors
The new boss from March 2012, Johannes Dotter, a former chairman of one of Alpine Bau’s Austrian competitors Porr AG, had ordered new audits into Alpine’s operations and the closing of failing Alpine offices abroad.
KPMG’s findings published internally in the summer of 2012 were shocking: the firm was sitting on customer invoices worth 300 to 400m euros which would never be paid, ripping a massive hole in the company balance sheets.
These were charges that Alpine had hoped to recoup from customers after costs for projects had risen above the initial contract price.
In October 2012, news of the KPMG report appeared in the press. This was the kiss of death for Alpine Bau which eventually went bust in June the following year.
But for Mrs Aluta-Oltyan, the wife of Alpine Bau’s former managing director, business in the Balkans continues to prosper.
In March this year she launched a new mining business, snapping up quarries worth 12m euros, including one Serbian-based mining company, Alpine Kamen – sold by the liquidators of its parent company Alpine Bau.
Don't miss tomorrow's extraordinary revelations of how a
close-knit group of Alpine Bau employees, dubbed "The Family", ran
operations for the Austrian giant in the Balkans.
This article was produced as part of a programme titled “A Paper
Trail to Better Governance”, with funding from the Austrian Development
Cooperation (ADC) and implemented by BIRN. The content does not reflect
views and opinions of ADC.
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