Austria: Chancellery storming of Vienna – Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is suspected. He firmly rejects these allegations.
Serious accusations against Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
The Austrian prosecutor accuses him of infidelity, extortion and corruption. Kurz and his team exchanged used criminal tactics to achieve power in the party and in the state.
Investigators arrived on Wednesday to secure the materials at the Chancellery, the ÖVP headquarters, the Ministry of Finance and a media company. They have been looking for e-mails since early 2016, as well as data carriers, servers, mobile phones and laptops. Kurz’s closest circle – such as the press spokesman, his media adviser and chief strategist – were hit. Rumors of an impending raid have been circulating for days.
Kurtz dismissed the corruption suspicion. “I am convinced that these allegations will soon prove false,” said the broadcaster of the conservative politician (ÖVP) ORF. He accused the investigators of having taken the chat messages out of context or distorted them. “And then a criminal charge is created around it.” Looking at home inspections, Federal President Alexander van der Bellen spoke of a very unusual and dangerous operation.
The investigators’ justification for the 104-page search is difficult. The creation was published by the online investigative portal Zackzack, which is behind former green leader and former National Assembly member Peter Beals.
The document raises suspicions that Kurz was involved in a deal with an Austrian media company. According to the indictment, from April 2016 onwards, as then Secretary of State, he was involved in influencing editorial content with taxpayer-funded advertisements. Surveys are said to have played an important role in this, with Kurtz’s team influenced by timing, questions and evaluation.
The ÖVP party and the media company vehemently denied the allegations.
The media group said: “At no time was there an agreement between ÖSTERREICH Media Group and the Ministry of Finance to pay for the surveys through advertising.”
ÖVP Deputy Secretary General Gabriela Schwartz spoke in a letter of false accusations. “It always happens with the same aim and order: to inflict enormous damage on the People’s Party and Sebastian Kurz,” he said. The investigators seem to want to “show the effect”.
The leader of the parliamentary group of the ÖVP, August Vogginger, declared resistance. “We will oppose with all our strength at the political and legal level,” he added.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the money of over € 1 million was bought from the finance budget when Kurz tried to take over the ÖVP. In 2017, he won a power struggle against the hopelessly inferior ÖVP leader Reinhold Mitterleiner and in December 2017 he became an adviser to the right-wing alliance ÖVP and FPÖ.
Even after that, the collaboration between the Chancellery and the media company must continue. “I haven’t gone as far as we have. A great investment. (…) Whoever pays creates. I like it, ”according to the investigation documents, it was said in a short chat message from a close friend of the Ministry of Finance after the requested report was rewritten. On the same day, Kurz is said to have thanked the sender: “Thank you for Austria today!”
Is the government crisis coming?
The government crisis now seems almost inevitable. The Green Party, as a partner of the ÖVP in the coalition since January 2020, has always stressed that only “clean politics” can be done with them. The alliance between the ÖVP and the Green Party was recently burdened by the ÖVP’s accusations against the judiciary.
Vice-Chancellor and Green Party leader Werner Kogler said Wednesday that “attacks on the judiciary as a whole must be repelled.” The editor-in-chief of the magazine “Falter”, Florian Klink, wrote on Twitter: “After a first reading of this search warrant and the chats it included, it can be said with certainty: this is no longer possible with the alliance between the ÖVP and the Greens. Game over”.