Vienna's public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Refco Inc.'s former chairman and chief executive, Phillip Bennett.
Bennett was removed from his positions at futures broker Refco last October, after the company discovered that a company he controlled owed Refco $430 million and was the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The company filed for bankruptcy before the close of the month. A Viennese warrant was also issued for Wolfgang Floettl Jr., t he son of a former president of the troubled Austrian bank -- Bank Fuer Arbeit und Wirtschaft AG -- that lent Bennett hundreds of millions of dollars.
Neither man is in Austria, but the country's Prosecutor's Office said that warrants are issued whenever there is concern that suspects might conspire to hide wrongdoing.
The bank has sued Refco and Bennett for fraud, unjust enrichment and deception in an attempt to recover more than $400 million in loans.
Separately, a Manhattan federal judge said that Bennett's criminal trial would begin in October 2006 or March 2007, depending on the schedule of his lawyer. Bennett's attorney, Gary Naftalis, is representing financier Kenneth Langone in a trial over former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso's pay package. That trial is supposed to start in late October, but could be delayed.
Bennett pleaded not guilty to eight counts of conspiracy, fraud and other charges in November. Refco was the largest U.S. independent futures and commodities brokerage and had just gone public in a $583 million offering last August.
