Honest remorse - or revenge on the former companion Kurz? In a kind of life confession, an intimate of Austria's ex-chancellor of the judiciary serves as a key witness. This not only crumbling Kurz's line of defense, which is threatened with a corruption process. More rich and powerful must tremble.
When Sebastian Kurz didn't know what to expect, he smiled and entered the fireplace room of the Vienna Hofburg. It was a sunny September morning when the committee of inquiry into the allegations of corruption against his ÖVP met. Kurz was supposed to testify as a source of information. He had nothing to fear. The meetings have long since degenerated into an empty ritual: the opposition is clamoring, the ÖVP is building the wall for yours. Like an onlooker, Kurz followed the bickering for hours and said nothing that would have shed light on the allegations of corruption against him and the ÖVP.
On the sidelines, he said a few sentences on his own behalf into the cameras, he wanted to take the opportunity, he said with a friendly smile, to give an "update" on the status of the investigation. More than two dozen witnesses have now been heard, all of whom have only brought exculpatory evidence to light. "I am convinced that there will be an attitude as I have always prophesied to you."
Three weeks later, Kurz's optimism should have evaporated. He had overlooked a witness who, in the strictest secrecy, made a comprehensive confession to Austria's corruption hunters, as it became known only yesterday, Thomas Schmid, who as part of the self-proclaimed "Praetorians" accompanied the rise of the former "miracle wuzzi", but now too briefly ' Brutus could become - and incidentally, as a key witness, could bring other prominent figures from politics and business to court.
Overall, Schmid has had 15 all-day interrogations since June, the business and corruption prosecutor announced on Tuesday. In order not to cause a stir, the corruption hunters did not meet Schmid in Vienna, but at the branch office in Graz.
In the meantime, the Austrian media are eagerly quoting from the 454 pages of the interrogation, which confirms what has only been rumored through Vienna for months: Schmid wants leniency status and thus a possible reduction in sentence - and puts a heavy burden on Sebastian Kurz and other suspects.
The main allegation against the former chancellor is currently bribery and disloyalty: in 2016, as Foreign Minister at the time, Kurz is said to have instigated his companion Schmid, at the time the highest official in the Ministry of Finance, to place doctored surveys in the newspaper "Österreich" - in exchange for advertisements by the "Österreich". ministry. If this allegation is true, Kurz's team used tax money to buy acceptable reporting. According to the news magazine "Profil", Schmid told the investigators: "The suspicion presented in the file is essentially correct."
This sentence is also mentioned elsewhere in the protocol - the investigations in the so-called CASAG process complex extend to countless side strands, the public prosecutor's office leads a total of 45 suspects, including Sebastian Kurz, former ministers and even the ÖVP itself. In order to be a key witness, you have to Schmid, however, also show previously unknown facts, which he apparently did: He testified that the current Parliament President Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP) had instructed him to turn off a tax audit against the Alois Mock Institute, which Sobotka himself headed. Quote Schmid: "The matter was settled in Sobotka's sense."
In a tax matter, Schmid claims to have intervened for René Benko from the Ministry of Finance. The real estate magnate and head of Karstadt Galeria Kaufhof is said to have offered Schmid a well-paid position in his company in return. The public prosecutors judge Schmid's statement to be sufficiently truthful: Yesterday, investigators searched the offices of Benko's Signa Holding.
Seven blacked-out pages in the interrogation protocols are also fueling speculation. It is probably about Benko's entry into the country's most powerful tabloid, the "Krone" and an unexplained "support of Benko for Kurz". The close connection between the entrepreneur and Kurz has been known for a long time, but donations or other financial contributions have not yet become public.
Kurz himself is relaxed in his first statement. All lies - this is how you could summarize his Facebook posting from Wednesday morning, in which he rejected Schmid's statements: "It should be questioned what credibility statements have that are in fact not a real admission of guilt, but have the goal of one's own Not being punished for wrongdoing by blaming others." He looks forward to proving his innocence - in court.
In fact, Schmid was not under an obligation to tell the truth in the talks with the public prosecutor's office, but if it turns out that he lied, that should destroy any chance of leniency. Especially since the judiciary has a trump card up its sleeve: Schmid's cell phone, which was named "Person of the Year" by the news magazine "Profil" in 2021. Actually collected in the course of the Ibiza affair as evidence in a much smaller corruption case, the investigators made dozens of random discoveries among the alleged 300,000 messages on Schmid's smartphone, which have since regularly shaken political Vienna and could now culminate in the most spectacular corruption process in the history of the republic.
He justified why Schmid is now unpacking so comprehensively with the insight that "we did things that weren't right" - and the intervention of his mother: "A very important point that made me rethink was that my mother told me that's not how we raised you, if you did something wrong then own up to it."
The previously known passages from the interrogation also point to another motive: revenge. The chats from Schmid's cell phone led to a raid in the Federal Chancellery in October 2021, according to Schmid, Kurz then wanted to throw him under the bus: "He told me that I now had to submit a written statement, according to which he knew nothing about all these allegations that were the subject of the proceedings and I should take all the blame." But he didn't want to be the pawn sacrifice.
At that time, Schmid had already risen to become the head of the multi-billion dollar state holding company ÖBAG, under strange circumstances that also concern the judiciary. After the house search, he went "to the diving station", but Kurz kept calling him and asking for a meeting. During this conversation, Kurz urged Schmid to hand over all chats and backups to him. "He said he had to take care of these chats himself, otherwise the ÖVP and Austria would go down the drain." He declined and then never picked up the phone. "This meeting was the last personal contact. I didn't speak to him after that."
While the last word in the affair will probably not be spoken in court for several years, attention is now also turning to day-to-day politics. Kurz's successor Karl Nehammer celebrated his 50th birthday yesterday - opposition politicians from the SPÖ wished him a "nice day" via Twitter.
Chancellor Nehammer has never completely detached himself from the Kurz era, in which he himself served as ÖVP general secretary and interior minister - that could get on his feet now. Schmid accuses the ÖVP grandee and Parliament President Wolfgang Sobotka, as does the club chairman (group leader) August Wöginger. Further personnel changes are likely to push the crisis-plagued black-green alliance to the brink of collapse. "Of course, the coalition is burdened," admitted Green Party leader Nina Tomaselli today. New elections once again seem a realistic scenario in Vienna - it would be the third in five years.
