Thursday, December 16, 2021
Investigation in the Treasury
Brief affair: Suspicious cash flows discovered
His time as Chancellor in Austria and also as a politician is over: The corruption investigations against Sebastian Kurz continue, however. An internal investigation has now discovered inconsistencies in a payment made to a pollster at the Treasury.
In the course of the corruption affair surrounding Austria’s former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, irregularities were discovered during an internal investigation at the Ministry of Finance. Among other things, incomprehensible payments to a pollster of more than 120,000 euros have come to light, the ministry announced in Vienna. The new finance minister Magnus Brunner spoke of a “structural failure”.
The corruption prosecutor is investigating the 35-year-old and several confidants on suspicion of false testimony in a parliamentary committee of inquiry and of breach of trust. Among other things, there is the suspicion that manipulated surveys were financed with tax money in order to pave the way for Kurz to the top of his conservative party ÖVP and to the Chancellery. The project is said to have been carried out in the Ministry of Finance. Specifically, more than a million euros in taxpayers’ money are said to have been spent on this.
Kurz and ex-finance minister Gernot Blümel protested their innocence several times before their resignations. After the allegations became known, a revision was made in the Ministry of Finance. “The picture is not really a particularly rosy one,” said the head of the internal investigation, Hannes Schuh. The pollster was commissioned by the ministry with a study for just under 35,000 euros. For incomprehensible reasons, however, she received almost 156,000 euros.
Newspaper advertisements also suspicious
The investigation also found irregularities in the placement of newspaper advertisements. The prosecutor sees a connection between the Ministry’s advertisements and the publications of the embellished surveys in a tabloid. According to the public prosecutor’s office, survey results – sometimes manipulated – were published in the editorial section of a daily newspaper and in other media belonging to the same group of companies. There is a suspicion that public officials paid money from the Treasury Treasury to the media company in return, as part of media and advertising collaborations. “According to the suspicion, the payments for this cooperation were essentially concealed consideration,” explains the public prosecutor.
In May, the public prosecutor opened an investigation against Kurz – and his political star began to decline. The preliminary low point was house searches in the Federal Chancellery and in the ÖVP headquarters in October, after which Kurz resigned as head of government at the beginning of December.