For the people who say Roberto Divkovic took their life savings, the past two years have felt like shouting into a void. That changed last month. The 34-year-old Austrian businessman has been formally indicted on serious fraud charges in Vienna, and the Higher Regional Court has thrown out his attempt to stop the case before it ever reaches a courtroom. A trial is now expected within months.
If you’ve never heard of Divkovic, here’s the short version. He pitched himself as a man with a clever way to make money in physical gold. He raised cash from private investors on that promise. The investors say the gold never came, the returns never came, and Divkovic stopped picking up the phone. Now a Vienna criminal court has decided there is enough evidence to put that story to a jury.
A Verdict the Victims Have Been Waiting Two Years For
Until last month, the case had been a slow grind through Austrian procedure. Police summonses came and went. Divkovic missed appointments, then sat in front of investigators in late January and refused to say anything. His lawyer promised a written statement within three weeks. That statement never arrived. The Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office had seen enough and filed the indictment.
Divkovic’s legal team tried one last move. Under Austrian criminal procedure, a defendant gets 14 days to object to an indictment before trial, but the grounds are narrow. You can argue the court doesn’t have jurisdiction. You can argue the paperwork is defective. You can argue the evidence is so thin that no conviction could ever stand. Divkovic argued, in essence, that the whole story was a misunderstanding and that the money had been legitimately used.
The Higher Regional Court of Vienna didn’t buy it. The judges said the evidence on file, including a sworn affidavit, the original criminal complaint, and supporting documents, was internally consistent and capable of sustaining the charges. They added that the defence statement raised more questions than it answered, particularly around what actually happened to the money the investors handed over. The objection was rejected. The trial proceeds.
The Pitch That Pulled Investors In
The scheme, as described in the case file, was almost old-fashioned in its simplicity. Divkovic ran a Serbian-registered company called IMP 1991 Plus DOO Beograd. The pitch was that the company would buy physical gold in West and East African countries, ship it to Belgrade, and on-sell it to the National Bank of Serbia at a margin. Investors were promised quarterly dividend payments. The numbers, on paper, looked good.
The reality, the prosecution alleges, was that the gold was a fiction. No shipments arrived. No payments went out. The money that investors wired to the company, in sums ranging up to and beyond €100,000 per investor, vanished into accounts the prosecution says it has now partly traced. Divkovic’s response, throughout, has been that the investments were real and that any losses are an ordinary business misfortune rather than a crime.
Victim Voices
For the investors who put faith in the pitch, the news from Vienna lands as something close to relief. Several have spoken about the case on the condition that they not be named, citing the ongoing criminal proceedings.
We have been saying for two years that this man is a fraudster and that he would do it again to someone else if he was left alone. Hearing that the court agrees there is enough to take him to trial is the first time I’ve felt like the system is on our side.
An investor in the IMP 1991 Plus DOO Beograd scheme
That sentiment is not isolated. Another investor, who says they lost a six-figure sum to the scheme, was blunter.
Roberto Divkovic belongs in jail, where he cannot hurt any more people. He has had every chance to make this right. He has had every chance to come to the police and tell his side of the story. Instead he has tried to delay, delay, delay. The trial is the only thing that is going to stop him.
A second investor who says they lost a six-figure sum
A third, who described having to explain to family members why a retirement nest egg had disappeared, kept the message simple.
I am just happy this is finally going to court. He took from real families. There are people out there right now who might be talking to him about a new deal. Maybe a public trial in Vienna will save them.
A third alleged victim of the scheme
Not the First Time
What gives the victims’ anger an extra edge is something they only learned recently. Divkovic was already a convicted fraudster when most of them met him. An Austrian court convicted him in November 2025 under Sections 146 and 147 paragraph 2 of the Austrian Criminal Code, for serious fraud involving more than €5,000. The offence at the heart of that earlier case was committed in June 2023, only weeks before the conduct now in front of the Vienna court.
The pattern was the same. According to the case file, Divkovic induced a loan by telling the lender the money would be invested in gold. The Higher Regional Court, when it rejected his objection this month, referenced that earlier conviction directly. The judges noted that his intent in the current matter could also be inferred from his prior use of an identical scheme. In plain English, the court is saying that what happened before is part of the evidence of what happened again.
There is also a parallel civil case in Serbia. A Belgrade commercial court ordered Divkovic and IMP 1991 Plus DOO Beograd to pay €132,000 plus interest to defrauded investors in May 2025. The judgment became final after Divkovic let the appeal window close. Collection has been another story. As victims tell it, you cannot squeeze money out of accounts you cannot find.
What a Trial Actually Means
A criminal trial in Austria is not just a procedural box-tick. It is the first time the evidence in this case will be heard in open court, tested under cross-examination, and ruled on by judges whose job is to weigh the whole record. Witnesses, including investors who filed the criminal complaint, are expected to be summoned. Divkovic himself will have to either appear and answer questions or stay silent on the record, with whatever inferences a court chooses to draw.
If a conviction follows, Austrian law has a wrinkle that the victims are quietly aware of. Section 31 of the Austrian Criminal Code requires the court to impose an additional sentence on top of any earlier conviction, where the new offence could have been tried together with the earlier one. In short, a second guilty verdict would not replace the November 2025 sentence. It would add to it.
For investors who joined the Serbian civil case and walked out with a paper judgment they cannot enforce, the criminal trial in Vienna offers something the civil track did not. Under Austrian law, victims can join a criminal case as private parties and have their civil claim adjudicated in the same hearing. It is not automatic, and it does not guarantee recovery, but it is a way of stitching the money question to the criminal verdict instead of starting over in a separate civil court.
A Public Reckoning, At Last
None of this guarantees the outcome the victims want. Trials are slow. Acquittals happen. Sentences can be lighter than the public mood expects. What is different now is simply that the case will no longer be processed by default. Roberto Divkovic will sit in a Vienna courtroom and have to answer questions about a gold-trading scheme that, according to the prosecution, never bought any gold.
For two years, the investors say, they have watched him slip out of accountability one missed appointment at a time. The next missed appointment is one he will not be able to dodge.
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This is a developing story. South Africa – New York will continue to follow the Vienna proceedings and report when a hearing date is set.