Sven’s account – The new South Tyrolean daily newspaper
The South Tyrolean Freedom calls on its members to transfer donations to an Austrian “association account”. Does the movement want to smuggle the money past the Italian supervisory authority – and overturn the party financing law?
by Matthias Koefler
The members of the South Tyrolean Freedom have received mail: “We have put the old, probably very strenuous years behind us. We are confidently looking forward to 2022, when we can celebrate the 15th anniversary of South Tyrolean freedom,” write Werner Thaler, the legal representative of the movement, MPs Sven Knoll and Myriam Atz-Tammerle and long-time frontwoman Eva Klotz. The membership card for 2022/2023 is enclosed with the letter. Since the STF – in contrast to the SVP – does not charge any membership fees, it is dependent on donations. “Our spectacular campaigns are only possible through donations,” emphasize Thaler, Knoll and Co. in a letter to the members. Below that is the IBAN of the account to which members can transfer their expenses.
Explosive: The account is not at a South Tyrolean bank, but at a bank in Innsbruck. And it runs on the “Verein Süd-Tiroler Freiheit”.
The background: The South Tyrolean Freedom Movement – Free Alliance for Tyrol is entered with this name in the state register of parties. As such, it has a duty to comply with all related transparency regulations. In 2019, the Italian party financing law was tightened: Since then, parties have had to publish all donations over 500 euros on their homepage (previously the upper limit was 5,000 euros). In addition, donations from abroad are no longer possible.
Against this background, on March 1, 2019, Knoll and Co. founded an association in Austria called “Süd-Tiroler Freiheit – Freies Bündnis für Tirol”, i.e. with the identical name with which the movement is also entered in the Italian party register. The chairman of the association is MP Sven Knoll, while Werner Thaler is his deputy. Other STF representatives such as Christian Kollmann, Stefan Zelger, Benjamin Pixner and Myriam Atz-Tammerle complete the board of the Innsbruck registered association.
This completes the confusion: By founding an association of the same name in Innsbruck, it was possible to create an almost identical copy of the political movement in South Tyrol. The faces stay the same. However, the legal framework and the resulting consequences are changing abruptly. Because what happens? While all parties are subject to the transparency obligations of the state supervisory authority (Commissione di garanzia degli statuti e per la trasparenza e il controllo dei rendiconti dei partiti politici) and thus, among other things, have to file all annual accounts including income and expenditure for control, the association is registered in Innsbruck exempt from these obligations.
The STF advertises on its homepage with a number of 4,658 members. If these members spent an average of 10 euros per head, the amount donated to the association and not to the movement would be around 50,000 euros a year. Experts contacted by the daily newspaper assume that the transaction abroad is advantageous from a tax point of view. But not only. With the association construct, the political movement manages to smuggle a large part of the income as well as all expenses granted by the association past the control of the supervisory authority. In contrast to the South Tyrolean parties, the foreign association is not subject to state transparency regulations. The suspicion is that the association also uses the funds to support the political work of the movement in South Tyrol – which could result in the deletion of the patriotic movement from the party register. Against this background, the declaration of campaign expenses by MP Knoll, who declared a total of 94.60 euros in expenses in 2018, seems interesting.
When asked by the daily newspaper, the STF frontman affirmed that the account was set up to offer students and South Tyroleans abroad the opportunity to donate to the movement, which has been prohibited by law since 2019. “If students and other people who do not live in South Tyrol give us money, then we are not allowed to keep it. It is confiscated by the state and used to build Italian prisons,” explains Knoll. The money in the association’s account is used exclusively to finance the activities of the members abroad (correspondence, cultural trips, lecture evenings, etc.). There is another account for the members in South Tyrol, with which the political activities of the movement are managed.
And what happens to donations from large organizations such as the Laurin Foundation? Do these go to the foreign account? Knoll says no: The account in Innsbruck is only used to finance the actual membership activity. However, the Laurin Foundation is not a member of the movement. It remains unclear why the letter quoted at the beginning was not only sent to the South Tyroleans abroad, but also to the members in South Tyrol. Anyone who makes a donation directly on the movement’s homepage is referred to the association in Innsbruck (and not to the movement). In 2020, the Italian account received only 2,290 euros, in addition to the fees paid by the mandataries and board members. The remainder of the donations may have flowed abroad.
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