Good morning!
To start the day, there is an overview of the latest news from the industry:
- René Benko is bankrupt
- Google employees face 40 years in prison
- TikTok turns off US MPs’ phones
The Austrian real estate investor René Benko has filed for bankruptcy as a private entrepreneur, as the Spiegel reported. Benko’s lawyer confirmed reports of the bankruptcy first published by the Austrian Kronenzeitung. The investor assumed various liabilities from guarantees, making it impossible for him to service all claims.
With his own insolvency application, Benko wanted to forestall an insolvency decision from an Innsbruck court. The Österreichische Finanzprokuratur, the law firm subordinate to the Austrian Ministry of Finance, previously demanded income tax of around two million euros from Benko.
Strictly speaking, the insolvency is not a personal insolvency, but since Benko is liable as a sole proprietor with all of his assets, the processing of the insolvency proceedings is almost identical.
Benko was the owner of the insolvent Signa group of companies, from which 219 creditors are now demanding 6.3 billion euros.
AI data theft: Google employees face 40 years in prison
A former Google software engineer is said to have stolen confidential information about artificial intelligence and sold it to Chinese companies reports Golem with reference to the Associated Press news agency.
The 38-year-old American is said to have been loading data onto his personal Google cloud since 2021. Then he traveled to an investor meeting at a Chinese company. Shortly afterwards, he quit his job at Google and started working for the Chinese company as CEO. Google then blocked his notebook and all of his access and in the process found the illegal uploads. The FBI found 500 individual files during an apartment search. The defendant has now been arrested in California and charged with theft of trade secrets.
US lawmakers want to force TikTok sales
The US House of Representatives voted unanimously on Thursday in favor of a bill that would force ByteDance to sell the video platform TikTok FAZ reported. If the company does not agree to the sale, the app will be banned across the US.
So far, TikTok has always been able to avoid attempts to block it in the USA; Donald Trump already tried to have the app banned during his time in office. This time too, the company is trying everything to remain on the market in America. So it sent a warning to US users: “Congress is planning a total ban on TikTok,” with a request to call the representatives from the respective electoral district. In some cases, the MPs’ offices were flooded with calls, so the phones had to be switched off.