The Vienna Bank Job

occrp.org

99 points·tosh··6 comments

Because the article does not reflect the latest status of this story, here is an update: The bank has now successfully filed a complaint against the withdrawal of the license and is now again a bank, although under supervision:

"In the first instance, the Administrative Court temporarily suspended the immediate effectiveness of the European Central Bank's (ECB's) withdrawal of the former Meinl Bank's licence until a final decision has been reached [...]. The parent company of the bank, Far East, had lodged a complaint, according to the court ruling." Source: https://wien.orf.at/stories/3022615/ (Own translation, article is in German)

An additional data point: apparently, AAB (formerly Meinl) was in the process of returning their banking license anyway, as they have had massive compliance issues over the past decade, and just giving up on that part of the business (and instead just focusing on asset management) would be a reasonable thing to do.

I'm somewhat surprised the ECB didn't wait for this to happen. I guess they wanted to send a message, or something.

Yeah, I remember the same bank was in trouble just a few weeks ago for a different set of compliance failures.

You know what they say: If you want to steal a million dollars rob a bank. If you want to steal a billion dollars make a bank.

As an Austria I feel deeply ashasmed for that practice. Even more so as the origonal owner, Meinl himself, is known as a snobbish pile of dung.

Ironically, for many years and after WWII Meinl run a grocery store chain which provided daily necessities for the regular people.

What's wrong with running a grocery story? Isn't AMZN making waves by moving into...groceries

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