Oida, the sound! It’s miserable in places. Three men and two women discuss and haggle, whisper and rant, fluff themselves up, do important things and are annoyed, and then are okay again. In English, Russian and Viennese: Welcome to Ibiza!
Today – at least in Austria – every child knows the scene: The then FPÖ chairman Heinz-Christian “HC” Strache is sitting in a better undershirt – the Austrians supposedly say “Ruderleiberl” – on a couch in a finca on Ibiza, next to it Viennese Vice Mayor Johann “Joschi” Gudenus and his wife, and they spend hours negotiating with a supposed oligarch niece and her adviser. Smoke hangs in the air, on the table are first full, then empty vodka and bubbly bottles, plus enough Red Bull. And then it’s about government contracts, party donations, the tabloid Crown, about a lot of money and above all: about power.
It is the beginning from the political end of HC Strache – and meanwhile material for your own TV series.
Anyone who transcribes these seven hours of secretly recorded video material in a rather unadorned room, like five reporters from Süddeutsche Zeitung At the beginning of 2019, the great drama is not immediately apparent. The evening of July 24, 2017, which was so fateful for the Austrian politician, began when the sun was just setting towards the horizon. Strache introduces himself (“I’m the Red Bull brother from Austria”), raves about Russia, makes compliments – very little relevant happens. “That’s good,” says Strache once, quite early. Oh well.
The five reporters with headphones press play, rewind, listen a second time, a third time
However, it quickly becomes clear that this is not a harmless chat on vacation. The conversation quickly comes to power, the mood changes and accordingly the transcripts of the reporters who transcribe the video. “Government contracts at an excessive price” is there, and Strache’s now legendary (at least in Austria) sentence about the alleged niece of the oligarchs’ intention to take over the largest newspaper in the country and orient it in its political favor: “If she really takes over the newspaper, two to push ourselves up to three weeks before the election, then we won’t make 27, then we’ll make 34 percent! ” And when you have power then you would “push” three or four journalists, bring in a few, and then three or four others would just have to be dumped. “Quickly quickly Quickly.” A media landscape like in Hungary, that would be something.
Screenshot from the original Ibiza video with the then Austrian Vice Chancellor and FPÖ boss Heinz-Christian Strache in the foreground and the then Vienna Vice Mayor Johann Gudenus (left).
(Photo: Spiegel / Süddeutsche Zeitung / dpa)
With 34 percent in the national elections in autumn 2017 – this must also be said again and again – HC Strache, the former right-wing radical, might have become Austrian Chancellor. But it turned out differently because the oligarch’s niece couldn’t buy the newspaper – it wasn’t even real itself.
The mood in the transcription room of the Süddeutsche Zeitung changes. The small room in the SZ high-rise is known internally as “das Kammerl”; only a few have access. The five reporters with headphones press play, rewind, listen a second time, a third time, and then type on the keyboards. In the case of spectacular finds, headphones are torn off and the attention of others is drawn to certain scenes: Crazy, listen to the minute from 3:40!
Everyone in the room is aware that these images could go down in Austrian contemporary history
However: The excitement in these seven hours does not increase linearly, Strache and Co. arrived at the important topics early and then circle them again and again. It is a very, very long and tough negotiation, and although the Russian camp expresses very clearly that it wants tangible corruption, Strache remains seated. Again and again he says that everything has to be legally compliant and legal – and then, almost in the next breath, he again offers things that are not exactly that.
For example, the matter of state contracts: Strache seriously suggests that a government with the participation of his party could cobble together state construction contracts for the alleged Russian woman, with artificially inflated prices.
Or the party donations: Strache outlined in Ibiza how to donate discreetly to the FPÖ, past the Court of Auditors – through an association that is “non-profit, has nothing to do with the party”. Quite a few wealthy patrons and entrepreneurs would do it that way. In fact, since then Austrian investigators have come across a number of donations from Austrian industrialists to associations close to the FPÖ.
If nothing relevant to the log can be heard, you watch Strache chewing on his fingernails, only to go on talking about the alleged homosexuality of political opponents, about making money without taxes (“cool, cool”) or about the supposed Russian (“Are you stupid, she’s hot”). That anyone takes illegal drugs – that in turn is decidedly not to be seen.
So watching the real Ibiza video wasn’t great fun or exciting entertainment. To be honest, it was more of a torture over longer distances because you had to stay focused on what was going on. At the same time, everyone in the room was aware that the pictures of the living room from Ibiza had what it takes to find their way into contemporary Austrian history as evidence of a certain state of mind. But the pictures also worked. Only the sound, that was really exhausting.
Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer researched the Ibiza affair for the SZ together with Leila Al-Serori, Oliver Das Gupta and Peter Münch.