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Former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz faces serious allegations.
Former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, 36, is heavily burdened by one of his closest comrades in arms in a corruption case. Thomas Schmid, 46, the former head of the state-owned holding company ÖBAG, testified for fifteen days at the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economics and Corruption, the body announced Tuesday in Vienna.
According to excerpts from the interrogation transcripts published by several media outlets, Schmid said that Kurz commissioned him to circulate opinion polls funded by taxpayers.
I got the job from Kurtz.
The attorney general’s office had already investigated the suspicion that Schmid, Kurz and others were involved in a survey case. According to the published minutes, Schmid has now confirmed that the Ministry of Finance placed advertisements in one of the newspapers, which, in turn, published opinion polls that had manipulated them. The surveys were also surreptitiously funded by the Ministry of Finance.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, this construction, known as the “tool”, was developed to pave the way for Kurz to lead the ÖVP and the chancellor’s office in 2017.
political earthquake That was the Ibiza case(01:56)
Schmid said, according to extracts from the minutes provided by the ORF public broadcaster and editor-in-chief of the weekly Walter. Neither Kurz nor his lawyer immediately commented.
Several home inspections
According to the attorney general’s office, Schmid’s comments also led to house searches on Tuesday on suspicion of bribery, corruption and abuse of office. A public relations consultant close to ÖVP confirmed to the Austrian news agency APA that her office had been searched. A large real estate company, which was inspected according to media reports, did not respond to the German news agency’s request.
The corruption hunters’ investigation was launched with a video clip filmed secretly in Ibiza. In it, the then right-wing leader of the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, gave the impression that he was up for sale. The publication of the video ruptured the alliance between the conservative chancellor’s party ÖVP and FPÖ in 2019. Shortly thereafter, he resigned as chancellor of Austria. (SDA)
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