After Sebastian Kurz’s resignation last year, the allegations against him faded into the background. Now a comrade-in-arms is blackening him. This increases the pressure on the conservatives and their government. A phone call should now relieve Kurz.
Austria’s former chancellor Sebastian Kurz and the conservative governing party ÖVP are confronted with increasingly concrete allegations of corruption after extensive incriminating statements from an insider. “It now needs full clarification, which is to be provided by the investigative authorities,” said the incumbent Prime Minister Karl Nehammer on Wednesday in a brief statement.
He referred to a 450-page report from the corruption prosecutor’s office that was made public the day before. In it, Kurz was described by his former close comrade-in-arms Thomas Schmid as the client for tax-financed and manipulated opinion polls. According to a politician from the co-governing Greens, the allegations weigh on the coalition.
Just last week, the 36-year-old former political star Kurz basked in a more positive PR light when he completed numerous interviews on the occasion of the publication of a book about his career to date. The corruption investigations that led to his resignation last year were not included in the book and were brushed aside by Kurz, for example in an interview with the broadcaster ORF: “I can only tell you that all these allegations are now not too big for me have more relevance”. A few days later, the affair surrounding questionable surveys and advertisements is once again the central topic of Austrian politics.
According to Schmid, Kurz was instrumental in the fact that the Ministry of Finance placed advertisements in a newspaper, which in turn published manipulated surveys. Some of the surveys were also paid for covertly by the ministry. Kurz is said to have paved his way to the top of the party and to the chancellor’s office during his time as foreign minister in 2017. Schmid, who used to work in the Ministry of Finance and managed the state holding company ÖBAG, also charged other ÖVP politicians and an entrepreneur, among other things with alleged interventions in tax matters.
Kurz defended himself against the allegations on Facebook on Wednesday. Schmid admitted to the public prosecutor that he had lied several times. “In the end, it will turn out that this is also the case in this case,” says Kurz. His attorney announced that there was a recording of a phone call between Kurz and Schmid, the content of which contradicted Schmid’s recent statements. “This tape recording is a bomb for the current state of investigation,” said the lawyer for the Austrian agency APA.
The agency released a transcript of the call. It says: “What they are criminally accusing us of, can you explain that somehow?” Asks Kurz Schmid. He can no longer sleep because of the allegations and doubts himself. “But I’ve never told you in any way…we’ve never given an order, or we haven’t even talked about advertisements and stuff like that…or I have but never said you should give the Beinschab (opinion researcher who is said to have implemented the manipulated polls, editor’s note) any orders.”
The explosive: Schmid does not contradict. He even adds: “The fact that this stupid cow then sends these bills around and, from which they are now doing, that was all an order, that was a completely different matter.”
Nevertheless, Kurz apparently expects an indictment: he is looking forward to refuting the allegations in court, wrote the ex-chancellor, who now works as an entrepreneur and as a strategic advisor for the billionaire US investor and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel.
The public prosecutor’s office is investigating against Kurz not only because of the survey affair, but also because of possible false statements to a parliamentary investigative committee, which also has alleged corruption within the ÖVP in its sights.
According to the parliamentarian Nina Tomaselli, who represents the Greens in the committee, Schmid’s information has now turned known allegations into “very hard evidence”. “Of course, the coalition is burdened by the actions of the ÖVP and the people who have acted there, especially in the past,” she said on Wednesday. However, neither they nor other prominent Green politicians put an end to the coalition in the room. Now it is the turn of the judiciary, it was said. However, Vice-Chancellor and Green Party leader Werner Kogler spoke out in favor of an extension of the U-committee in view of the Schmid minutes.
