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Signa project in Bolzano
Photo: Sonaar/Snohetta/Signa
The architects have done a great job on Ötzi's new home.
In her designs, the glacier mummy is enthroned in a museum on Bozen's local mountain, the Virgl, high above the South Tyrolean capital.
The Signa Group of the Austrian real estate entrepreneur René Benko wants to invest 170 million euros here: in cable cars and parks, the concert hall and the mummy museum.
City and country would then pay for the PPP project, short for Public Private Partnership, for decades.
Ötzi needs a "new, adequate home," the company says - and Signa is also hoping for the support of the South Tyrolean governor Arno Kompatscher (SVP).
An internal list of donors from the party's 2018 election campaign, which SPIEGEL has seen, now raises the question "whether people wanted to secure Kompatscher's favor with money for the SVP," says South Tyrolean opposition politician Paul Köllensperger.
The central figure in the case is the Bozen business lawyer Heinz Peter Hager, who advises Benkos Signa on the Italian business.
At least half a dozen companies directly affiliated with him donated 5,000 euros each to the SVP in 2018, and Hager himself also transferred exactly this amount to the conservative party, according to the internal list of donors.
Donations to parties only had to be published above this limit at the time.
In South Tyrol there is also a “personal election campaign cost limit” for individual candidates of 30,000 euros.
So far, only various large donations to the SVP from Hager's environment were known.
The Austrian contractor and Signa investor Hans Peter Haselsteiner also gave the party 25,000 euros through one of his companies.
Hager admits the payments to SPIEGEL.
However, there is no connection with Signa's plans.
He was concerned with "political stability in South Tyrol" and "peace and prosperity".
Benko states that he had no knowledge of what was happening.
He and Signa never donated to political parties.
South Tyrol's incumbent governor Kompatscher explains that donations were "generally only made to the SVP", part of which flowed into his election campaign "as is generally the case".
"Nothing has been decided yet" on the construction project on the Virgl.
sbo/kgi
