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The Freedom Party, Austria’s right-wing populist party, has announced revelations. Although they turned out to be uninteresting, the reputational damage has been done. For Chancellor Kurz, like the whole country.
He is available to investigators “at any time for a testimony”: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Photo: Helmut Fohringer (Keystone)
The FPÖ made it exciting in recent days: it had started a countdown on the TuEsFuerMich.at website, created by Freedom Party as a new Internet platform. A “political bombshell” was promised for Monday at noon. The right-wing populists aroused great expectations, after all, political Vienna has been in constant turmoil since it emerged two weeks ago that Finance Minister Gernot Blümel was being indicted and one by the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA ). House search it had taken place with him.
The investigation is based on the suspicion that the Novomatic gaming company may have offered a donation in exchange for help with tax problems in Italy. The Novomatic CEO had approached Blümel, who had launched the then Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, Thomas Schmid, with a text message that read: “Do it for me” plus a smiley face, hence the name. of the FPÖ. Website. So what exactly the political bombshell is should only be reported here after a countdown.
Blümel protests his innocence, there has never been a donation of this kind, describes the help for the company as something natural, the government’s job is to support Austrian companies. When the Novomatic request came, Blümel was not a member of the government, but head of the ÖVP in Vienna. Since then, the ÖVP and the Federal Chancellor have thrown themselves into the Blümel breach, accusing the WKStA of “misconduct”, prejudice, “carelessness” and name confusion. The ÖVP justice spokesperson went on to state that there were “deliberately scattered leaks” from the corruption prosecutor, “even if the leak has unfortunately not yet been found.”
Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Blümel (ÖVP) protests his innocence.
Photo: Hans Punz (AFP)
In fact, just a few days ago, the Vienna Prosecutor closed an investigation into possible leaks from the WKStA. It was started a year ago because Chancellor Kurz had told reporters that there was some kind of red web at the agency and that investigators were distributing the contents of the files to the media.
However, recently there have also been constructive developments: the ruling coalition formed by the ÖVP and the Greens is debating the design of the new function of a federal prosecutor and a transparency law, the first drafts are available.
Sebastian Kurz’s personal letter
On Sunday, the chancellor surprised public opinion with a private letter, however open, to corruption investigators, which he only signed with “Sebastian Kurz” but which he had sent to several media outlets at the same time. In it he assures that nothing to do with the accusations against his finance minister and that it is “available to investigators at any time to give testimony.” It is important to him “that these incorrect facts and erroneous assumptions can be quickly eliminated.”
The “incorrect assumptions” of the archives damaged the reputations at home and abroad of those affected, as well as the government of Vienna and, therefore, the entire Republic of Austria. The writing is not intended to be interference, Kurz wrote. However, it was seen as such by much of the public. If he had nothing to hide, the SPÖ commented, then the Chancellor should let the judiciary investigate in peace.
FPÖ presented some familiar things
As for the FPÖ and its countdown, the right-wing populists did not detonate a bomb at their press conference, but they did present some familiar things: They indicted Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen before the publication of the Ibiza-Videos On May 17, 2019, knowledge of the video and of the meeting of the then head of the FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache with a supposed oligarch widow in Ibiza. As evidence, they presented photos of excerpts from the president’s electronic calendar, which someone had apparently secretly taken in the summer of 2019 after the ÖVP-FPÖ government broke up.
Van der Bellen, as the presidential chancellery put it, made later entries about the days of chaos in May 2019, for example about a discussion about the corresponding “rumors” about the video. The FPÖ does not believe this is credible. Van der Bellen was informed in advance of what was coming, according to FPÖ MP Christian Hafenecker. The president had entered: “The bomb explodes.” The FPÖ now considers the federal president to be a “co-host of the Ibiza scandal”, suspecting a conspiracy of a “deep state” in Austria.
