QuoteGraft probe reaches into the highest levels of Austria's government
Prosecutors' raid on house of finance minister puts chancellor Sebastian Kurz's party on back foot
For weeks, rumours circulated about who Austrian prosecutors might name next in a sprawling, high-level corruption probe.
Last Thursday morning, the investigation reached the highest levels of government when a squad of fraud police accompanied by forensic experts raided the house of the country's finance minister, Gernot Blümel.
Blümel has now been formally named as a key suspect in a graft inquiry into the deep and complex relationships between Austrian lawmakers, senior officials and the Austrian gambling company Novomatic.
Blümel is as close as anyone in Austrian politics to chancellor Sebastian Kurz. In the warrant that judges approved to raid Blümel's house, the finance minister's name appeared 23 times. It named Kurz 42 times, signalling where prosecutors may look next.
A political corruption scandal sank Kurz's first government with the far-right in 2019. An equally mettlesome set of allegations — this time against allies in his own party — could prove just as damaging to his second.
The Novomatic case is a challenge to a leader whose political success was built on a promise of youth and reform — and an end to the cosy and sometimes nepotistic politics of Austria's recent past.
Revelations from the probe — and a parallel parliamentary inquiry — have shone an unflattering light on an enduring system of party-political patronage. It is so ingrained in Austrian politics that it has its own vocabulary: Parteibuchwirtschaft, or "party book economy".
In their inquiry into Blümel, prosecutors said they were looking at whether in 2017 he agreed to help Novomatic lobby the Italian government for a €40m tax rebate, in exchange for political support in Austria. At the time, Blümel was a close confidant of Kurz, who was then Austria's foreign minister.
Both Blümel and Novomatic have denied the allegations. However the escalating scandal has caught Kurz on the back foot, political analyst Thomas Hofer notes.
"This investigation has become a huge impediment for the government," he said. "Blümel really is very close [to Kurz]. He's inner circle . . . The last six weeks have been very tough."
The year began for the Kurz's government with the resignation of its labour minister in an embarrassing plagiarism scandal. Data meanwhile has showed the economy to be among the worst hit in Europe by the pandemic. And in early February, a damning official inquiry slated Austrian intelligence for failures that allowed a deadly terror attack to unfold in Vienna in November.
But the chancellor remains popular. Poll ratings for his Austrian People's party have slipped from 40 per cent to 37 per cent over the past two months, but are still comfortably ahead of its nearest rivals.
Kurz's calculation, according to chancellery officials, is that most Austrians see the scandal — widely known as the "Casinos Case" — as he does: politically motivated by partisan officials in law enforcement opposed to his political agenda. The evidence against Blümel, officials say, is flimsy at best.
This week Kurz has gone on the offensive, accusing prosecutors at the WKStA — the prosecuting bureau that ordered the raid on Blümel's home — of over-reach.
"There have been so many lapses that I believe there is an urgent need for change there," he said at a Tuesday press conference.
Of 40,000 named suspects in WKStA investigations in recent years, the chancellor noted, just 400 had been convicted. An abortive raid on Austria's own intelligence agency earlier this year damaged relationships with key allies, he said.
Kurz and his ministers now say they want to create a new Federal Prosecutor's office — akin to that in Switzerland and Germany — and sweep aside the WKStA altogether. Such a change would require a constitutional amendment, but is likely to be widely supported across the political spectrum. Even Kurz's political opponents admit the existing system is prone to politicisation.
But the proposed reforms may not be enough to contain the bad headlines.
Dozens of other WKStA raids have taken place during the past few months on properties owned by former Novomatic employees. Other senior People's party politicians, including former finance minister Hartwig Löger and the head of the country's state holding company, Thomas Schmid, have also been named as suspects.
While Novomatic has denied improperly donating money to the People's party, investigators are also looking at large sums of money the company gave to dozens of small party-affiliated satellite societies, clubs and think tanks.
"They've seized so much now that they basically have the full correspondence of the government — including everything that everyone sent privately on their own phones — over the past two years," said one political consultant closely involved with the Novomatic probe.
In parallel to the WKStA's efforts, a special investigatory committee in the Austrian parliament is also probing the case.
"It's clear that a huge amount of political pressure is now being exerted on the corruption investigators, who are just trying to do their jobs," said Stephanie Krisper, a parliamentarian for the liberal Neos party and a member of the investigatory committee.
"We have quite the culture of corruption and secrecy in Austria. Due to legislation being kept weak, it's very difficult to shed light on the flow of money to parties and organisations close to them."
Blümel was hauled in front of the committee last July. His testimony made headlines at the time when, in answer to more than 60 questions, the finance minister said he did not know or could not remember.
"In most other countries I would have said he would have to resign," said Krisper.
"Not being able to remember over 60 times about events in the last two years paints a pretty bad picture of a finance minister. But perhaps it's still a better picture than the one that would have emerged if he did."
The article paints a decent picture of Austrian politics as a whole. These kinds of back room arrangements and favors are quite common among the big parties ÖVP (conservatives), SPÖ (social democrats) and FPÖ (right wing populist) who have run the country in varying constellations since 1949 (the Greens being in power with ÖVP is a first); federal politics is heavily centered around Vienna and there's a big network connecting businesses and politics where everybody knows each other personally. (And it's arguably worse on a state level where the lines between business and politics begin to blur.)
Every government has its corruption scandals, some larger, some smaller, and there's been a succession of parliamentary investigations into the events, with the invariable display of memory loss by key witnesses and actors.
Blümel himself, when asked in the current Ibiza investigation about data on his laptop, recently said he doesn't recall ever owning or working on a laptop.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbW7qeCXsAEut4Y.jpg:small)
(https://cms.falter.at/blogs/files/2020/09/Blu%CC%88mel_Laptop_foto_ORF-500x282.jpeg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbW14PuXQAA3Jwo.jpg:small)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbW9TOjWAAE4m_l.jpg:small)
(He's also infamous for getting numbers wrong in the budget proposals several times, i.e. turning millions into thousands, but that's besides the point :P )
One of his predecessors, Karl-Heinz Grasser, FPÖ finance minister from 2000-2007 was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison following a corruption trial that lasted almost 10 years and took almost 5 years of investigation by prosecutors to sort through a network of embezzlement and corruption.
Any chances of Kurz getting seriously damaged by this? Is any Austrian political party clean? :P
Quote from: The Larch on February 19, 2021, 07:59:32 AM
Any chances of Kurz getting seriously damaged by this? Is any Austrian political party clean? :P
Well, he's attacking the prosecutors as overreaching and being politically motivated. :P He still is more popular than the alternatives, and I think he'll be able to weather it, unless he (and not just his trusted inner circle) is shown to be a central figure. The SPÖ has a very low profile under Pamela Rendi-Wagner (she's a medical doctor, and seems competent and smart, but creates almost 0 emotional connection), and FPÖ will have to claw back from losing Strache and suffering from their own corruption.
NEOS (libertarians) and Greens are not particularly hit by scandal at the moment, but their bases are too small.
I'm not even particularly shocked or surprised at the current investigations. More so that there's actually an investigation. :P A former prosecutor in the Ibiza case (she's now a judge in Graz) recently said in the parliamentary investigation that her work was hindered constantly by political meddling. This was, on the whole, met with a collective shrug. Austrians, overall, are quite apathetic towards their politicians. "They do what they want, anyways" is a pervasive feeling, and you would need a major political earthquake to get people to pay attention and get things cleaned up. Even Ibiza only really effected one party, with the ÖVP brushing everything off, claiming they hadn't realized how bad the FPÖ was and got away with it. You would need a scandal that involves all major political parties and leaders on a level where it's not just the usual favors and payments being traded, but where the braod public would see amajor moral failure of those in charge. Basically and Ibiza size scandal that involves all parties.
On the plus side, to laud their work, hundreds of people are sending sweets and thank you notes to the Prosecutors of Corruption these days. :P
Video on Twitter going around ... a Greens minister called an urgent press conference where she reiterated why they think an independent federal prosecutor is so important. A journalist afterwards asked why she called this press conference - she said nothing new, offered no new insights, and just reiterated what was already known. The minister then gave a waffling answer how really important that prosecutor reform is. :D
In news that surprise no one in Austria:
https://www.euronews.com/2021/03/01/austria-has-failed-in-fight-against-corruption-says-council-of-europe
QuoteAustria has failed in fight against corruption, says Council of Europe
Austria has made "overall insufficient" progress in the fight against corruption, according to a new report by the Council of Europe.
The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) says Austria has failed to implement its recommendations to tackle judicial and political misconduct.
Four years ago, the Council of Europe body had issued recommendations to the EU member state to prevent corruption among members of parliament, judges, and prosecutors.
"[But] Austria has implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner only two of 19 recommendations made in 2017," GRECO said on Monday.
After the 2019 parliamentary elections, Austria was urged to "seriously deal" with political corruption by establishing a code of conduct on conflicts of interest or asset declarations. The country was also urged to make its legislative process more transparent.
But the new report says that Austria's "very low level of compliance" with the recommendations "has not evolved".
"[We] regret the persistent lack of progress" that Austria has made in implementing anti-corruption measures relating to MPs, GRECO said.
Meanwhile, regarding judges and prosecutors, the body was also concerned that a "considerable number of measures" envisaged since 2018 "have still not been finalised".
Overall the body said that Austria's level of compliance with the recommendations was "globally unsatisfactory".
However, the report did note that Austrian magistrates are now prohibited from holding political or ethical positions at the same time.
GRECO has asked Austria to submit a progress report on the implementation of its outstanding recommendations "as soon as possible and no later than 30 September this year".
The findings come just two weeks after the home of the Austrian Finance Minister, Gernot Blümel, was searched by authorities.
Courts had suspected Blümel - a close ally of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz - of being involved in the secret financing of the conservative party by the global gambling giant Novomatic. Blümel has denied any wrongdoing.
The Chancellor has also defended his finance minister, accusing prosecutors of politicising the judicial process.
Meanwhile, Kurz's first government, a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, collapsed in May 2019 after the corruption scandal known as 'Ibizagate'.
Austria's then-Vice-chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, was filmed in Ibiza in 2017 soliciting support from a Russian oligarch in return for political favours and resigned after the recordings were released.
GRECO - which brings together the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, as well as Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the United States - says that Austria ranks below Turkey, and just above Serbia in implementing its anti-corruption recommendations.
In a statement to Euronews, Austria's Ministry of Justice confirmed that only two of GRECO's eleven recommendations on preventing corruption among judges and prosecutors had been fully implemented.
"What is gratifying about the latest GRECO report is that the measures taken by the judiciary in the recent past are seen and recognised," a spokesperson said, adding that Austria also preparing to tighten its criminal law on corruption.
"In any case, the Federal Ministry of Justice endeavours to take further implementation steps for its area of competence, insofar as the recommendations are compatible with Austrian legal and constitutional principles."
On finance minister "I never had a laptop" Blümel: turns out he now does own one. However, he shares it with his wife, and during the recent search of his home by police she had it on her while going for a walk with their child. :D
In other corruption news: a local producer of face masks that became one of the heroes last spring had to confirm that most of their product was imported from China and rebranded as Austrian. And since they couldn't get certified in Austria they got their certification in Hungary instead.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross in the state of Vorarlberg is under investigation. Last year they received 100,000 test kits for free from the government to help test the population. Allegedly, however, they instead offered many of these tests to companies and corporations for 10 to 15 EUR a pop.
Quote from: Syt on March 04, 2021, 01:51:25 AM
In other corruption news: a local producer of face masks that became one of the heroes last spring had to confirm that most of their product was imported from China and rebranded as Austrian. And since they couldn't get certified in Austria they got their certification in Hungary instead.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross in the state of Vorarlberg is under investigation. Last year they received 100,000 test kits for free from the government to help test the population. Allegedly, however, they instead offered many of these tests to companies and corporations for 10 to 15 EUR a pop.
This kind of corruption is not as cool as corruption by Chaos. Unless... Are these guys part of a large Nurgle cult in Austria?
I'm not certain.
In other news, Karin Kneissl (no party membership), who was foreign minister in Kurz's previous cabinet and who invited Putin to her 2018 wedding during her tenure has been offered a board position at Russian oil company Rosneft.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/03/03/austria-ex-minister-who-danced-with-putin-gets-rosneft-nomination-a73139
(https://static.themoscowtimes.com/image/article_1360/8a/TASS_34892530.jpg)
Hopefully with some Westerners on the board there would be a push for greater corporate accountability at Rosneft.
Quote from: DGuller on March 04, 2021, 08:13:35 AM
Hopefully with some Westerners on the board there would be a push for greater corporate accountability at Rosneft.
It greatly worked with Schröder at Gazprom, so why not.
Excellent summary of the current political situation of Kurz in Austria:
https://twitter.com/Marcus_How89/status/1374728045295251457
Quote*MEANWHILE, IN AUSTRIA..* Next month, it will be the 10-year anniversary of the beginning of Sebastian Kurz's career in the federal government, when, at the age of twenty-four, he assumed the post of state secretary for integration. 1/
Likewise, in the month thereafter, it will be four years since Kurz rode a wave of internal intrigue to become leader of the ÖVP, ending its grand coalition with the SPÖ, and changing its ideological profile perhaps forever. 2/
Today, Kurz remains the dominant personality in Austrian politics, having rescued the ÖVP from the electoral doldrums and forming two governments. But his popularity is, at present, waning. 3/
Currently, the ÖVP is polling at between 35-37%, down from last year, when it enjoyed support that regularly exceeded 40%. It's still without competition for first place, but the party is not as invincible as it previously seemed. 4/
Kurz, meanwhile, was as of January no longer the most popular politician, being overtaken in surveys by SPÖ leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner (PRW). While Kurz has a net approval rating of -10, PRW's is +7 – a reversal of fortunes for both of them. 5/
Equally, polls indicate that Kurz is by far the preferred chancellor candidate, with 47%. But this is significantly down from the highs of 62% he enjoyed in April 2020. The Kurz brand, although secure, is toxic for an increasing number of swing voters. 6/
Given political volatility within Austria and Kurz's visibility on the European stage, there is a lot of noise around the chancellor – which is created as much by him as his opponents. It is worth cutting through this in order to situate the ÖVP at present. 7/
From my perspective, there are four key reasons why the ÖVP are losing support: 1) pandemic management; 2) loss of ideological profile; 3) competence and corruption scandals; and 4) increasingly erratic comms. 8/
All of this, especially (4), reaches to the very essence of how the Kurz ÖVP operates. Some background: Over a decade, Kurz developed his own network as leader of the ÖVP youth wing (JVP), which cultivated his personal brand. 9/
His longstanding (and almost entirely male) team are as young as they are close-knit, and their skill is outmatched only by their loyalty. Kurz cannot be fully understood without his team; they are symbiotic. 10/
Most of the team are consultants & PR professionals who are as religious as they are economically liberal. Most were socialised around the Lower Austrian (NÖ) ÖVP, which is used to absolute majorities and is the most powerful state branch of the party. 11/
This influences Kurz greatly, but more b/c he is an extroverted listener with the few people he trusts, rather than ideological. He also knows & outsources his limits, not least as he was not taken seriously early in his career. 12/
At the centre of the operation is message control. This was centralised both within the ÖVP and the gov't itself when Kurz took over. Comms are carefully choreographed in timing & sequencing. Social media is key. Within the multi-layered ÖVP, handmaidens also act as brokers. 13/
Prior to the pandemic, this operation was highly effective. Core themes, especially migration and border security, were a steady drumbeat, even as they lost some ground to climate change. But met with a sudden cataclysm, it has floundered. 14/
During the first wave, it worked well, reinforced by the goodwill of a nervous public. But overconfidence thereafter led to political games, such as linking the pandemic with border security and issuing briefings that contradicted the Green-led Health Ministry. 15/
Meanwhile, the pandemic was stripping away the ÖVP's ideological profile. On the economy, Kurz's ÖVP represented a right-wing inversion of the Third Way, advocating zero-deficits and targeted deregulation while protecting lower earners & de facto refraining from privatisation.16/
Now the ÖVP is overseeing the largest deficit spending in Austria's post-war history, while small businesses remain shut and low-income voters in jobs disproportionately exposed to the virus. It has a cup of cold sick for most segments of its voter coalition. 17/
In other key policy areas, immigration is on hold, leaving only straws to clutch at, even as the Greens bite the bullet on the deportation of unregistered minors. 18/
Ministerial (in)competence is also a factor. Despite clear failures by the ÖVP-controlled Interior Ministry to prevent the terrorist attack in Vienna in November, Karl Nehammer not only didn't resign, he shifted the blame. So much for the party of law & order. 19/
Elsewhere, Economy Minister Margarete Schramböck was found to have wasted public funds on trying to establish a digital retailer to compete with Amazon, which then fizzled out into failure. 20/
Then, Family and Work Minister Christine Aschbacher resigned in January after it was revealed that she had plagiarised her Master's dissertation. The work brief was shrewdly passed to technocrat Martin Kochner, but much of the damage was already done. 21/
If questionable ethics weren't enough, senior ÖVP officials are the subjects of corruption investigations, including Kurz's right-hand, Finance Minister Gernot Blümel. Kurz's response has been to publicly attack the anticorruption agency (WKStA). 22/
If the various corruption allegations are true, Kurz's ÖVP is far from the only party to be compromised. But given that Kurz had in 2017 marketed his Obama-style "new" ÖVP as being different, such reputational damage will not go unnoticed by swing voters, esp if it worsens. 23/
All of this has led to erratic behaviour by Kurz and his team. Hence the attribution of the blame for the slow rate of vaccination to the EU's allocation mechanism. Or Kurz's recent visit to Israel to discuss w/ Netanyahu the opening of a vaccination centre in Austria. 24/
Since the Kurz II gov't was formed, the chancellor has been losing friends. The Greens are unhappy. The NEOS have terse relations with Kurz. Herbert Kickl, the co-leader of the FPÖ and former interior minister, hates Kurz possibly above all else. 25/
The hate is such that Kurz currently only has constructive relations with PRW, which is an astounding turnaround given that a raison d'etre of the Kurz ÖVP had been to bury the SPÖ in opposition for good. 26/
There are rumblings of an anti-Kurz coalition being formed, which would incl. the Greens and be enabled by the FPÖ(!), but this would likely only happen if corruption investigations mount. Kurz looks set to hang on for the foreseeable future, even as his brand becomes tired. 27/
Finally, Kurz's position in the ÖVP remains unassailable, cemented as it is by the NÖ-ÖVP and the structural centralisation of party management. But his position isn't completely watertight. The governor barons are quiet for now, but their loyalty is not unconditional. 28/
Indeed, Günther Platter's Tirolean ÖVP put up unprecedented resistance to the demands of the federal gov't in Feb to impose restrictions as lax attitudes to winter sports were resulting in the spread of new virus mutations. Such indicators are ones to watch. 29/END
https://www.politico.eu/article/house-of-sebastian-kurz/
(https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/07/
[email protected])
QuoteSebastian Kurz: From political wunderkind to rogue operator
A sweeping corruption investigation has destroyed the Austrian leader's fresh-faced image.
Sebastian Kurz, a political wunderkind who became Austria's leader at just 31, rose to power by cultivating a youthful, do-gooder image that endeared him to young and old alike.
And then he went rogue.
A cache of private text messages between the center-right chancellor and his deputies and other correspondence uncovered by Austrian authorities as part of a sweeping investigation into political corruption portrays Kurz not as the well-mannered "favorite son-in-law of the nation" who captured the heart of his compatriots and much of the EU, but rather as a shrewd behind-the-scenes operator willing to do whatever it takes to push through his agenda, whether dealing with the Catholic Church, doling out political favors or taking on rivals.
Kurz's metamorphosis might sound like a familiar coming-of-age political tale, but at a time when much of Central Europe has slipped into a form of soft authoritarianism, his transformation and the larger corruption scandal engulfing Austria's political class suggest that the erosion of democratic norms in the region threatens to spread into Western Europe.
That would mark a substantial setback for the European Union, which is already struggling to handle recalcitrant governments in Hungary and Poland over steps they've taken to undermine both the independent judiciary and the media. Like the leaders of those countries, Kurz has not shied away from attacking the EU to deflect from his domestic woes. Just last week, he led an unsuccessful attempt, joined by the Czech Republic and Slovenia, to win a larger allotment of vaccines from the EU, a quixotic effort widely dismissed as a political stunt.
It wasn't long ago that many in Brussels saw Kurz not as a threat, but as conservative Europe's future. Europe's center-right, the dominant political bloc in the European parliament, was enamored by the brash young Austrian, whose tough stance on migration many viewed as a model for conservative parties across the Continent. He was particularly popular in Germany, where Kurz wooed the media, in particular the influential Bild tabloid. Some even saw in Kurz the standard bearer for the post-Merkel era.
No more.
While the exchanges offer a rare, unfiltered glimpse at how politicians operate behind the scenes, what they also reveal (aside from Kurz's penchant for heart emojis and exclamation marks) is what veteran Austrian political commentator Peter Filzmaier described as the "unbelievable banality of the people who lead our republic."
"Don't worry! You're family," Finance Minister Gernot Blümel, one of Kurz's closest deputies, texted a fellow loyalist in an effort to reassure the man that he would be taken care of with a plum job.
Such tactics, even if they evoke a bad mafia film, are hardly surprising in political circles. But Kurz, who refashioned Austria's staid conservative party root and branch after taking it over in 2017, changing everything from its name to its color (from black to turquoise), was supposed to be different. He didn't just promise to revolutionize the country's politics: He convinced Austrians he was serious.
Kurz, who leads the Austrian People's Party, is not a direct subject of the corruption investigations, which encompass allegations of everything from bribery to violating official secrecy laws, but they have touched his inner circle. Perhaps even more damaging to Kurz in the long term, however, is that the text exchanges have all but destroyed the public persona he built as a fresh-faced millennial politician who would put an end to the clubby machine-style politics that dominated Austria's postwar history.
Far from drawing a line under that era, Kurz has erected what critics have dubbed the "House of Kurz," a close-knit network of the chancellor's loyalists in the government, private sector and media who quietly collaborate to their mutual benefit.
Instead of the "new style" Kurz promised, commentator Ruth Wodak wrote this week, Austrians are learning that "anything goes."
The corruption probes that uncovered the private text traffic were triggered by the so-called Ibiza Affair, a scandal that exploded in 2019 after the release of a video showing the far-right leader who became Kurz's coalition partner offering to trade political favors for cash during a boozy session with a woman he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. Kurz survived the immediate scandal unscathed, though it felled his coalition partner, forcing a new election that resulted in his current coalition with Austria's Greens. In the meantime, the authorities' original Ibiza investigation has led them to the chancellor's inner circle.
Casino royale
At the center of the corruption investigation is the relationship between Austrian casino operators and public officials. Former Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, the man featured in the infamous Ibiza footage, claimed on the tape that one of the companies, Novomatic, "pays everyone." In other words, he alleged that the company funnels money to all of the country's political parties in return for favors, an accusation the company and the political parties strenuously deny.
In the course of investigating that claim, however, investigators stumbled on a text sent in 2017 by the former head of Novomatic to Kurz ally Blümel, the current finance minister. The Novomatic executive, Harald Neumann, told Blümel he needed a meeting with Kurz, then still Austria's foreign minister, to discuss "for one, a donation and for another a problem we have in Italy."
Blümel and Kurz say the meeting never took place and no donation was ever made. (The Italy reference was in connection with a tax dispute Novomatic faced there.)
Kurz portrayed the investigation, led by Austria's financial crimes prosecutor, as deeply flawed.
"So many mistakes have been made that I think there's an urgent need for change there," Kurz said in February, drawing the ire of Austria's judges and prosecutors, who accused him of making an unprecedented assault on the judiciary's independence.
If Kurz hoped his interventions would cause prosecutors to step back, he was disappointed. If anything, they increased the pressure, exploring accusations — denied by those involved — that a senior justice official loyal to Kurz secretly funneled Blümel's camp information about the investigation.
Prosecutors have named Blümel a suspect in their bribery investigation, sparking opposition cries for his resignation, which he has rejected. He denies any wrongdoing.
As often happens in broad investigations into politicians' dealings, the Austrian probe has taken authorities in unexpected directions.
'I love my chancellor'
One involves a man named Thomas Schmid, the head of a state holding company that manages Austria's stakes in former state-owned enterprises including Telekom Austria and OMV, the oil and gas company. Together with Blümel, Schmid belongs to a close-knit group of devoted Kurz lieutenants who have worked with the chancellor since his early days in politics.
In analyzing the texts on Schmid's phone, authorities discovered how the executive won his top position at Austria's state holding company, ÖBAG, where he earns, depending on the portfolio's performance, up to €600,000 per year.
Not only did Schmid — until 2018 a senior official in Austria's finance ministry — have a hand in writing the job description for the post, he also hand-picked the board that would hire him. Schmid had never worked as a corporate executive and had no international experience, factors that might, under other circumstances, have dashed his chances of heading a holding company overseeing corporate investments totaling €26 billion. But Schmid had something else: a powerful ally named Sebastian Kurz.
After months of engineering his move, Schmid sought assurances from Kurz that his new job would carry real power and not just be ceremonial.
"You're getting everything you want 😘😘😘," Kurz reassured Schmid in a text message in March of 2019.
"🙂🙂🙂 I'm so happy...I love my chancellor ," Schmid responded.
Following public outcry over the affair, Schmid said on Tuesday that he would resign from the state holding company when his contract expires next year and not exercise an option to extend it by two years.
Austria's opposition is demanding an investigation into whether Schmid broke any laws in securing the job. Both he and Kurz, who declined to comment for this article, deny any wrongdoing.
"What we can see is that the 'Kurz System' was designed from the beginning to take control of state institutions and to create a state within the state," said Kai Jan Krainer, the parliamentary leader of the opposition Social Democrats.
Church and state
It seems more likely that Kurz was simply rewarding an ally for his loyalty. Over the years, Schmid had taken on any number of off-the-books assignments for Kurz, people who have worked with the two men say. Just weeks before Schmid got the big state holding job, he helped the chancellor with a delicate matter involving the Catholic Church.
After a local civil servant was stabbed to death by a Turkish refugee in western Austria in early 2019, Kurz endorsed a tough new law to allow authorities to place asylum seekers deemed "dangerous" in preventive custody.
But Catholic leaders, led by the popular archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, opposed the idea, publicly comparing it to the tactics used by repressive regimes. "Every dictatorship in the world locks people up out of simple mistrust," Schönborn wrote in a newspaper column. "Tomorrow it might be you or me."
Kurz encouraged Schmid to "step on the gas" with a plan to exert pressure on the church. "We're going to leave them with a considerable package," Schmid texted him ahead of a meeting with a senior church official.
Schmid went on to explain he would inform his church counterpart that "in the context of reviewing all tax privileges across the republic, the finance ministry is going to take a very close look at the church." Both men knew that for the church, which would have difficulty operating without preferential tax treatment, the threat was the equivalent of the nuclear option.
Kurz's response: "Yes, super."
A few hours later, Schmid reported back to Kurz on the meeting, writing that the church official was "a basket case" after receiving the threat. The man "turned red then pale and then started shaking," Schmid wrote to his boss.
"Super, thank you so much!!!!," Kurz replied.
Despite Kurz's apparent elation, the tactic didn't work. Schönborn, the cardinal, continued to lambaste the proposed asylum policy, calling it "inhuman."
Just weeks after Schmid's church visit, Kurz's government collapsed amid the Ibiza Affair. The asylum policy never went into effect, though Kurz's party is still pursuing it.
Beyond the scandals eating away at Kurz's credibility, the larger question is whether he can survive as a political bad boy. Even though his approval rating has tanked in recent days, most observers are betting he will, given the weakness of the opposition.
"Since he took over the People's Party in 2017, the question was whether this is just clever marketing or is something really going to change," Filzmaier said.
At least Austrians now have the answer.
What's not coming out clearly in the article is the attempts of Kurz to pressure the WKStA (Prosecutors of Economic and Corruption cases) into dropping the case, thinking about dismantling it, and suggesting laws to prevent prosecutors from raiding public administration and government offices in criminal investgations, but rather having them formally request materials through bureaucratic means.
It's also interesting to see how media cover the scandal. State broadcaster ORF has several influential analysts who cover it, but there's other papers who are much more careful in how they report. E.g. Kurier is owned by a close friend of Kurz. Additionally, the government is one of the biggest advertising customers for newspapers and tabloids, and can spend their PR budget at their discretion, so some papers may be more inclined to "play nice" to protect income (though they will quickly jump ship if there's change in the air, or there's a promising new candidate - years ago, the Krone, Austria's biggest tabloid and one of the papers in Europe with highest per capita distribution, heavily supported a Social Democrat candidate for chancellor after he - supposedly - promised them more ad revenue if he won office. This government ad money situation needs to stop IMHO.
Kurz lost a lot of trust in recent surveys. There are still plenty supporters, however. Some shrug it off as, "that's just how politics is done in Austria." There's some truth to that, but Kurz explicitly promised to be better than that. More people have issues with how his government handles the pandemic than the scandals. The opposition is of course up in arms, and the Greens look increasingly weak in not standing up to their coalition partner in these matters. It's a plus that the Greens run the justice ministry at the moment - an ÖVP run one would likely have tried to bury this matter long ago or acquiesced to the chancellor's desire to make opportune changes.
What is new is the vehemence with which the chancellor attacks the detractors and looks at changing how government works to protect himself. Previous governments did put "their" people in useful positions, but mostly shied away from upsetting the system too much. Question is what will break first: Kurz or the system.
And even if he steps down - he and many of his paladins are in their 30s; they will be part of the republic for decades to come. If not in politics, then in business - or both.
Oh, and the latest is that investigators (supposedly - confirmation outstanding) found on Thomas Schmid's government issued phone ca. 2500 dick pics that he may or may not have shared with others in government. Personally, I don't think it's a heinous thing (though this really doesn't belong on a government phone), but I wouldn't be surprised if instead of the corruption or incompetence shown by this government, this is the thing that leads to consequences.
Interesting.
The most recent trust index for politicans (the difference between "I trust X" and "I don't trust X").
(https://i.redd.it/vjepaqr9s3s61.png)
Kurz lost a lot but remains in the plus.
What did Hofer and Kickl do?
Well, this is a twist.
In March, the Constitutional Court of Austria (the highest court in the country) decided that the finance minister has to provide the contents of several email accounts to the parliamentary inquiry into the Ibiza affair.
The finance minister has refused to do so.
Therefore the Court has now tasked the Austrian President to execute the decision. The president is authorized to have this executed by appropriate organs of federal or state authority, including the military. The chancellor's approval is not required, because the decision is against one of his ministers.
I assume that the contents of the mailboxes will be "oops" deleted in an accident.
Chancellor Kurz was recently ordered to hand over similar content of email and hones for himself and a number of government members as part of the corruption investigations by the Constitutional Court. He similarly refused, saying he had turned over everything he considered relevant and had hundreds of people swear that they searched their files and found nothing pertaining to said investigations. I assume how this one resolves will depend on how the handover of finance ministry data will play out.
The finance minister has handed over the files ... in paper form, claiming they can't be digitized because TOP SECRET. :rolleyes:
Meanwhile his party held a press conference about how the social democrats (who are dealing with internal power struggles) are sinking ever deeper into scandal and corruption. :wacko:
... and now the finance minister has deleted all his tweets. This is not suspicious at all. :unsure:
Corruption? In MY Austria?
Quote from: Scipio on May 07, 2021, 07:40:06 AM
Corruption? In MY Austria?
I know! Franz Joseph is spinning his fancy marble vault.
https://www.politico.eu/article/sebastian-kurz-media-war-austria-press-freedom/
QuoteSebastian Kurz's media war
Recent media interference has damaged the Austrian chancellor's reputation.
BERLIN — Sebastian Kurz, the made-for-Instagram Austrian chancellor who rose to prominence by harnessing the power of social media, is racing to take back control of his story.
Facing uncomfortable questions at home about his manhandling of the press and a tsunami of political scandals, Kurz is due to travel on Tuesday to Munich, where he's to receive the "Media Prize of Freedom" from a German publisher.
For the image-obsessed Kurz, 34, whose personal photographer feeds Instagram and Facebook with images of the chancellor's every move, the event is the stuff of PR gold (past recipients of the prize from the Weimer Media Group include Mikhail Gorbachev and Jean-Claude Juncker). Just after lunch, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will introduce his Austrian friend during a live-streamed ceremony at Munich's storied Bavaria Film Studios.
It's a fitting setting for an honor Kurz's critics say is about as genuine as the replica Brandenburg Gate that another famous Austrian — Hollywood legend Billy Wilder — erected on the Bavaria lot (for his film "One, Two, Three," a political comedy where nothing is what it seems).
Far from promoting "freedom of expression, political dialogue and democracy," as the prize citation reads, Kurz's detractors say he has sought to systematically undermine Austrian media through a combination of financial pressure, access control and outright intimidation.
Kurz "doesn't accept that journalists stand on the other side of the fence, that their job is to check facts and report," said Helmut Brandstätter, a veteran Austrian broadcast and print journalist who left the profession in 2019 to run for parliament, where he now serves as an MP with the liberal Neos party. "The guiding principle is to not accept that journalism is a check on power because, according to him, journalism should only involve passing along official announcements."
It's a similar playbook that Central Europe's self-styled "illiberal democrats" — from Poland to Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic — have relied on in recent years to undermine critical media.
Unlike those former communist countries, however, Austria has been anchored in Western Europe's liberal political traditions since the war, its democracy underpinned by a vibrant press. Whether that history will make the Alpine nation more resilient against an authoritarian turn is an open question. But the country's trajectory is already causing alarm in some quarters; this year, Austria recorded its lowest ranking ever in Reporters Without Borders' annual scorecard of media freedom, which was released in April.
Cash for media
The government's main tool for rewarding its media allies is its generous PR budget. Kurz's coalition, which includes his party and the Greens, recently earmarked €210 million for media spending until 2024.
In the past, most of that money has been spent on advertising, a practice critics see as a hidden subsidy for the country's powerful tabloids, which support Kurz and have received most of the cash. Last year, for example, the coalition spent €47 million on such advertising, or triple what the previous government did.
"These money flows remind me of the initial years of the [Hungarian] Fidesz government," said Milan Nič, who heads research about Central and Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank. Such tactics, common in the region, occur in the spirit of "if something is not forbidden, it's allowed," Nič added.
Kurz's office declined requests to comment for this article. But last week, on World Press Day, Kurz tweeted that press freedom and independent media were "important pillars of our liberal democracy."
"As the federal government, our support for the freedom of the press and media is unlimited," he added.
Even as he has lavished his media allies, Kurz has been less generous with Austria's public media. A government decision to end a requirement that legal announcements be printed in the publicly-owned Wiener Zeitung has the future of that newspaper, which was founded in 1703 and is one of the world's oldest, in question. Though owned by the government, the paper is editorially independent. Kurz, who supports an online-only model for the paper, recently said that "operation and financing of a newspaper isn't the responsibility of the republic."
The ORF, the state broadcaster with a news division often critical of the government, is on stable financial footing, thanks to its financing mix of mandatory license fees from viewers and advertising. But journalists who work there say the broadcaster, the primary source of information for most Austrians, faces persistent interventions from Kurz's government in news coverage. Many fear Kurz will use the upcoming election of a new ORF director, which the chancellor can influence through the board of governors, to install a political crony.
"There have been critical phases in the past, but it has never been as bad as it is now," said a senior ORF journalist who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.
While there's nothing out of the ordinary about political leaders trying to spin stories in their favor, the recent publication of text exchanges from within Kurz's inner circle has pulled back the curtain on the lengths the chancellor is willing to go to steer the media.
Kurz's critics say the only thing that's unlimited about the chancellor's approach to the media is his desire to influence it. Armed with a generous budget and a communication staff of 80 that includes writers, photographers, videographers and PR specialists, Kurz's media operation is larger than many Austrian newsrooms. In addition to promoting the chancellor and his government, the team serves another purpose of equal urgency: to snuff out critical press coverage.
In July 2020, Alexandra Wachter, an Austrian television journalist who works for private broadcaster Puls 24, confronted Kurz with accusations in the German media that he regularly attacks the EU to deflect attention from domestic problems and curry favor with his base. Kurz's response: "You have a brain of your own."
Sensing it would reflect poorly on the chancellor, his chief press aide asked the broadcaster to cut the exchange, which it did (Puls 24 later decided to make available the full interview online).
"Kurz is manic about how the media portray him, how he is perceived, photographed and judged," Hubert Patterer, the editor of Kleine Zeitung, a conservative regional paper, concluded after a series of run-ins with Kurz and his handlers in a widely-read column dedicated to the chancellor's "message control" strategy.
While most politicians are vain to some degree, the journalists who follow Kurz closely say his fixation with the media goes beyond casual narcissism.
"At times," Patterer wrote, "it has the quality of an obsession."
Editors on speed dial
Patterer got a taste of that fixation in the early phase of the pandemic after his paper ran an article and photographs showing Kurz flouting social distancing rules during a visit to the western part of the country. For weeks, the chancellor had been stressing the necessity of pandemic restrictions to Austrians and the pictures of him being celebrated at an impromptu rally by fans created an uproar.
Kurz called several times to complain, Patterer said, going as far as to send photographs of the event taken by his own photographer to argue his case.
Patterer said in an interview that he didn't so much regard the calls as an intervention as much as a sign that the chancellor can't handle criticism.
"You could see how his confidence abandons him when he's confronted with pictures that don't align with his self-image," he said. "He refused to acknowledge that he had made a mistake."
Patterer, whose paper is the largest in southeastern Austria, a region that has long supported Kurz's party, wasn't the only journalist the chancellor has on speed dial. Editors from several other newspapers that covered his trip reported receiving similar calls.
"It was the first time that his message control didn't work," Patterer said. "He became a victim of the power of the pictures."
Kurz isn't the first Austrian chancellor to intervene with the press or to reward titles that support him with government advertising. But Austrian editors say that under Kurz, these practices have intensified to a degree they've never seen.
"The difference now is two-fold," Brandstätter said. "First, the perfection of the surveillance and, second, the brutality of the interventions."
When he was editor-in-chief of the daily Kurier newspaper, Brandstätter said Kurz, then foreign minister, regularly called both him and the owner of his newspaper to air grievances. On one occasion, Kurz called from New York to complain about a picture the paper had run of him, he said.
Both Patterer and Brandstätter recall Kurz asking them the same question in private: "Why don't you like me?"
Brandstätter suspects his own exit as Kurier editor in 2018 was accelerated by Kurz's interventions with the paper's proprietor, a banking group traditionally close to the chancellor's conservative party. Though Kurz has denied those suggestions, he told an associate in one of the text exchanges that recently came to light that he believed Brandstätter "hates" him.
A centrist newspaper with a strong following in and around Vienna, Kurier is important to Kurz's camp because its readership comprises many middle-class swing voters, the very demographic the party needs in order to maintain its dominance.
"The message they wanted to send was that we were under permanent supervision, that they have 80 people monitoring what we do at all times and that if they don't like something, they would call as many times as it took to get what they wanted," Brandstätter said.
Awkward questions
Recently, Kurz has gotten little of what he wanted when it comes to media coverage.
He has faced awkward questions over why, after never missing an opportunity to post photographs of himself traveling in economy class, he hopped on a private jet to fly from Israel back to Vienna in March. Even more awkward, the luxury jet that ferried him is owned by Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally whom the U.S. has sought to extradite over his alleged involvement in organized crime.
Meanwhile, a clutch of investigations by Austrian authorities into allegations of government corruption have triggered a steady flow of embarrassing details about Kurz's inner circle, including the discovery of more than 2,000 pornographic images on the government-issued iPhone of a close Kurz associate.
Kurz's campaign against critical media has also hit speed bumps. The chancellor's Austrian People's Party lost a lawsuit last month that it had filed against Der Falter, the Vienna investigative weekly, for writing that Kurz's team had intentionally violated campaign finance rules in 2019.
Ten days after the ruling, an online platform operated by Kurz's party attacked Falter editor Florian Klenk with a flurry of baseless accusations about the journalist's involvement in the "Ibiza" scandal that brought down Kurz's first government with the far-right Freedom Party in 2019.
The piece would likely have drawn little notice if Kurz, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, hadn't shared it on Twitter.
Klenk says Kurz's move was an attempt at "intimidation." If so, it backfired because instead of triggering a debate about Klenk, Kurz raised questions about why the chancellor of Austria would spread false information about a prominent journalist online.
Those setbacks underscore why Kurz's Germany trip is so important. Throughout his short political career, he has cultivated the German press. During the refugee crisis, for example, Kurz was a regular on Germany's talk show circuit, campaigning for tougher migration rules in Europe.
Kurz's primary motivation with such visits doesn't appear to be to improve his image among Germans, but rather to show Austrians that he is a politician of international renown. And though some German media view him with a critical eye (just last week, Jan Böhmermann, a prominent German satirist, subjected Kurz to a withering takedown on his TV show), overall, the coverage of the chancellor has been positive, at times fawning.
For German conservatives frustrated by Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-leaning views on migration and many other social issues, Kurz has been a breath of fresh air.
Wolfram Weimer, the German publisher behind Kurz's media award, said Merkel's Christian Democrats, now trailing the Greens in many polls, could only dream of the kind of dominance Kurz has achieved in Austria. (Despite the recent difficulties, Kurz's party still has a comfortable lead in the polls.)
In other words, for German conservatives, Kurz represents both what once was and what could be again.
Weimer said his organization was eager to recognize Kurz for the role he has played as a "bridge builder" between Eastern and Western Europe. As for the corruption scandals surrounding the government and Kurz's treatment of the media, Weimer, who operates a small stable of publications about politics and business, said he hasn't really focused on the details of what he called "domestic Austrian issues."
"These are things I don't really know that much about or — to be honest — really care about," he said.
Quote from: Syt on April 10, 2021, 08:28:58 AM
The most recent trust index for politicans (the difference between "I trust X" and "I don't trust X").
(https://9s3s61.png)
Kurz lost a lot but remains in the plus.
Jim Halpert on the right there?
How was Jan Böhmermann's Magazin Royal received in Austria?
Quote from: Zanza on May 11, 2021, 09:46:46 AM
How was Jan Böhmermann's Magazin Royal received in Austria?
Generally: "Yes, we know. :( " Though some said, "Wow, I knew all this, but if you condense it like this - it's really bad." There were some detractors to Böhmermann's Austria special, but since all his points are a matter of public record, they can't attack the presented facts. They rather focus on "But the SPÖ/FPÖ/Greens etc. are worse!"
I do feel even his "court newspapers" are becoming more critical, albeit at a glacial pace, because there's simply too much stuff coming up to taint his image. The "new style" of less corruption, less "Freunderlwirtschaft" (cronyism) and more transparency which he promised when he took leadership of the party in 2017 is pretty much dead or only used as a joke at this point.
In Germany I would expect his government to be long resigned, but this being Austria ... the finance minister was grilled live on the news yesterday, trying his best Palpatine impression ("I love democracy ...") but I don't think it moved the needle for him with either supporters or opponents.
Kurz's media image obsessions is a point of ridicule too at this point. Like when he posted a photo taken by his court photographer of him on a Zoom call with the EU leaders during a recent summit ... and you could see that his camera was switched off, so that the others wouldn't see his photographer taking the photos.
Germany's government consists of people like Scheuer (toll, Autobahn GmbH, chief VDA lobbyist), Klöckner (Nestlé et al), or Spahn (personal advantages, mask deals) or Scholz (Wirecard, CumEx). It is hardly a bastion of competence and integrity. I guess Merkel herself is a paragon of political integrity, but her ministers are not and she tolerates it.
Quote from: Zanza on May 11, 2021, 11:40:37 AM
Germany's government consists of people like Scheuer (toll, Autobahn GmbH, chief VDA lobbyist), Klöckner (Nestlé et al), or Spahn (personal advantages, mask deals) or Scholz (Wirecard, CumEx). It is hardly a bastion of competence and integrity. I guess Merkel herself is a paragon of political integrity, but her ministers are not and she tolerates it.
Yeah, I thought about commenting on the recent CDU scandals, but at least it's visible in the polls. As the joke went:
"Wow, the Greens are ahead of the CDU in the polls."
"Well, they worked hard for it."
"The Greens?"
"No, the CDU."
So Chancellor Kurz is being investigated for potentially having lied under oath in the Ibiza parliamentary inquiry (he said he wasn't in the loop about ex-finance ministry official Schmid getting the board seat in a state holding until shortly before it happened, and had no influence on the decision, whereas the recovered chat messages between him and Schmid paint a completely different picture).
While the chancellor is busy campaigning in the media to gain sympathy ("the investigation tries to entrap you into contradicting yourself", "my mother is so saddened"), the time is running out for the running parliamentary inquiry. With the ÖVP playing delay tactics, time is running out - after June, no additional evidence can be collected, and till autumn the members of the committee must finalize their reports.
The opposition parties are in favor of extending the investigation as each round of interviews seems to dig up more - and worse - dirt.
Question was how the Greens would vote. They announced today that they would not vote for extending the investigation which seems to spark, let's say, an unhappy reaction among their supporters (and some members).
The Greens campaigned with the slogan "Who would your sense of decency vote for?" with a still image from the Ibiza video. In the past they had a reputation of fighting for transparency and investigating corruption charges no matter what.
They are in a shitty situation. As junior partner in the government coalition they've pretty much failed to implement any of their signature promises that made it into the coalition agreement (obviously Covid didn't help). Numerous times ÖVP ministers (ministers in Austria act quite independently within the government) set actions that run counter to Green policies, with the Greens protesting only in the meekest way to avoid a public break in the coalition. When they were asked if they could still work with a party where numerous members (including ministers and the chancellor) are investigated for criminal activities they said that this would be evaluated if any of those cases make it to court.
Regarding the ongoing investigative committee Sigi Maurer who leads the Greens in parliament said that the opposition are free to launch a new one ... however, this would take until March next year at least (they have to wait till the current committee finish their reports etc.). All evidence of the current investigation has to be destroyed at closure, so any material would have to be requested again.
At the same time, breaking the coalition would likely not help the Greens, either. The ÖVP sits comfortably at 35% in polls, the Greens meander between 15% and 10%. ÖVP could form a government with FPÖ, SPÖ as they did in the past, or even the NEOS if they get enough votes (they have overlap with ÖVP especially in economic questions, though NEOS are stronger proponents than ÖVP of small government, fewer regulations, privatizing public companies including base necessities etc.).
My guess is that the Greens hope that the ÖVP scandals will lead to the ÖVP falling out of favor and Kurz resigning, but I find this unlikely.
An older picture by Sigi Maurer is making the rounds again, originally posted by her as response to internet hate (of which she got plenty):
(https://i.redd.it/z8qngsvk32071.png)
Seems a lot of people feel that finger is directed at them and the fight against corruption at the moment.
Well, this is still ongoing and escalated last week:
https://www.ft.com/content/7a93f36b-1605-4a0d-b059-514f622fb4df
QuoteAustria 'grand corruption' probe widens across media
Ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz suspected of seeking positive political coverage
Austrian prosecutors are investigating whether former chancellor Sebastian Kurz bribed the owners of the country's biggest newspaper for positive political coverage.
Police raided premises across Vienna on Thursday, including those of the publisher of the mass-market tabloid Kronen Zeitung and the free sheet Heute.
The state prosecutor for economic crimes and corruption said that its continuing high-profile investigation into "grand corruption" in Austria — which has so far snared 45 individuals at the pinnacle of Austrian business and politics — had expanded to encompass potential charges of embezzlement and bribery in the media industry.
Investigators said they were exploring fresh evidence over whether Austrian officials and politicians, including Kurz, conspired to use public funds to take out adverts in the widely-read newspapers in exchange for positive political coverage.
The prosecutor's office is also probing if politicians agreed to amend laws concerning corporate foundations — a special holding structure favoured by rich Austrians — to suit the controlling owners of the Kronen Zeitung and Heute, the super-wealthy Dichand family.
Kurz was forced to resign in October 2021 as the first details of a criminal investigation against him emerged.
The initial probe concerned allegations that a key confident, Thomas Schmid — a former senior official in the ministry of finance — had directed ministry funds to pay for adverts in the online news portal "Österreich" in exchange for positive coverage of Kurz as he rose to the chancellorship.
In an explosive development to the case, Schmid turned crown witness last October. His phone, which contained thousands of sensitive communications between government officials, had initially triggered the investigation when it was confiscated as part of a separate probe.
Schmid subsequently provided investigators with hours of witness testimony against Kurz and other senior politicians and officials in the conservative People's party.
A spokesperson for Kurz said that the prosecutor "has been continuously making new, false accusations against numerous individuals, including Sebastian Kurz" for several years. "All cases that have been heard in court so far have ended in acquittal. This case will be no different."
Allies of the former chancellor have long contended that the investigation is political and have sharply criticised the prosecutors' office for sensationally publicising information on its case before any charges have been brought. Kurz has also himself cast doubt on the reliability of Schmid as a witness and denied he played a key role in his political team.
The Dichand family could not be reached for comment. Eva Dichand, the editor of Heute, wrote on Twitter that there was no substance to the allegations.
"Thomas Schmitt's [sp] statement that I would have agreed positive reporting in Heute and Kronen Zeitung in exchange for adverts is simply WRONG," she wrote. She argued that a former ally of the ex-chancellor was trying to play up allegations to justify his "star witness status" in exchange for leniency over existing charges made against him.
The investigation into corruption in the Austrian media establishment has so-far snared ten individuals and three companies. But it is only one leg of a sprawling nexus of cases known as the "Causa CASAG" that began as an inquiry into political favours in the gambling industry.
The prosecutor's office has 45 open dossiers which include figures such as the property billionaire René Benko, the owner of London's Selfridges department store. Prosecutors have conducted 40 raids on companies and private properties in the past two years.
Meanwhile, the FPÖ continues to lead in all recent polls (next federal elections are ca. in Fall 2024):
(https://i.postimg.cc/Sx3pm8kx/image.png)
It's not so much that they offer better solutions. Or any solutions. It's an expression of deep dissatisfaction with the current government (ÖVP and Greens) and the SPÖ failing time and again to exploit ÖVP scandals and weaknesses (they're now going through a protracted, nasty fight for party leadership), making them seem ineffectual. The FPÖ, despite losing Strache and Hofer, capitalize by being against, well, everything that comes from the government, but offer no alternatives. Which fits their party leader, Kickl. He's the remainder of the party's old triple leadership, and by far the nastiest (though arguably the dimmest) of the three, not very popular outside his supporters, and elections could turn into an "anyone but him" scenario for a majority of voters.