Austria’s former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) has been charged with suspected false statements. This was announced by the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) in Vienna. The indictment is about statements by the 36-year-old in the Ibiza investigative committee of the Austrian Parliament.
In the committee in June 2020, Kurz downplayed his role in appointing the head of the Öbag state holding company, Thomas Schmid. He was informed about the decision in advance, but did not participate further, according to his statement at the time.
Based on chat messages, however, the public prosecutor assumes that the former head of government was very well involved in the personnel. Kurz and Schmid would have regularly exchanged views on the subject by mid-2017 at the latest. The allegations are wrong, Kurz wrote on Platform X (formerly Twitter). It is not surprising for him and his team that the authority decided to file a criminal complaint despite 30 exculpatory testimonies.
The WKStA has been investigating Kurz since spring 2021 following a complaint by the social democratic SPÖ and liberal NEOS. The accusation is: suspicion of false testimony. According to the authorities, the penalty for the alleged crime is up to three years in prison.
The trial against Kurz is scheduled to begin on October 18. A spokeswoman for the regional court said that two more days of negotiations were scheduled for October 20 and 23. According to the court, in addition to Kurz, his former head of cabinet Bernhard Bonelli and the former director general of Casinos Austria, Bettina Glatz-Kremsner, are accused. The file includes several boxes, the criminal complaint more than 100 pages, it said.
The Ibiza scandal is not the ex-chancellor’s only legal problem: Kurz may also have an indictment in the so-called advertisement affair. It’s about embellished surveys and government advertisements in tabloid newspapers that are said to have been paid for with taxpayers’ money. Several people are being investigated on suspicion of breach of trust, bribery and corruption. Here, too, Kurz denies the allegations.
The former head of the ÖVP, once a highly valued hope for the conservatives throughout Europe, has twice headed a coalition in Austria. From 2017 to 2019, Kurz led an alliance between the ÖVP and the right-wing FPÖ. From 2020 to 2021 he was head of government in a coalition of the ÖVP and the Greens. In view of the allegations, he initially resigned from his posts in autumn 2021. In December 2021 he announced his complete departure from politics. He is now an entrepreneur and lobbyist.
The reason for all investigations was the Ibiza affair. The Southgerman newspaper reported in 2019 about a video secretly recorded on the holiday island, in which the then FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache appeared susceptible to corruption. The then coalition of ÖVP and FPÖ broke up in the affair.
In the search for evidence of nepotism and corruption during the Kurz government, Schmid’s mobile phone played a central role. More than 300,000 chats – often considered incriminating by the public prosecutor’s office – were a treasure trove for the investigators. Schmid himself offered himself as a key witness in the affair and repeatedly incriminated Kurz, with whom he had a close relationship.