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The prosecutor announced that Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is under investigation for claiming that government funds were used in corrupt transactions to ensure that tabloids receive positive reports.
The prosecutor issued a statement on Wednesday that as part of the investigation, raids were conducted in multiple locations, including two government departments, which is a recent legal problem facing Kurz and his right-wing People’s Party.
Finance Minister Gernot Bluemel confirmed that there was a raid in his department, and Austrian media reported that the Chancellery was also one of the target locations.
The prosecutor said that Kurz and nine other individuals and three organizations are investigating the matter.
The prosecutor said that the essence of the allegations was that between 2016 and 2018, “the resources of the Ministry of Finance were used to fund partially manipulated opinion polls that served the political interests of political parties”.
This is related to the period when Kurz took over the leadership of the BJP and led the BJP and the far-right Liberal Party (FPOe) to form an alliance.
Prosecutors claimed that an unnamed media company “received payment” in exchange for publishing these investigations.
The company has not yet been officially named, but it has been widely known as the Oesterreich tabloid by the Austrian media.
The organization that runs Oesterreich issued a statement denying any wrongdoing in commissioning or publishing its investigation.
Al Jazeera reporter Dominique Kane from Berlin said that the newspaper conducted a public opinion survey and “puts great emphasis on Mr. Kurz’s party, not as an advertisement”.
Kane said that certain people in the paper subsequently got positions on the board of a particular company.
“The prosecutor’s suggestion is that the federal finances are involved in this matter-which means government money, that is, taxpayers’ money,” he said.
“This is the first time [Kurz] I found myself under investigation for corruption and bribery,” Kane added.
‘House of Cards’
Kurz, who has been attending the summit of EU leaders in Slovenia, did not respond directly.
However, other People’s Party politicians reacted angrily to the raid. The party’s deputy general secretary Gabriela Schwartz said they were “showing” and that “the allegations were made against an incident dating back five years. “.
The BJP member Andreas Hange even attributed the investigation to the “left-wing cells” of the prosecutor’s office.
The latest allegations may put new pressure on the party’s alliance with the Green Party, which has been affected by earlier scandals.
The “Gate of Ibiza” incident in 2019 led to the downfall of Kurtz’s previous government and the Liberal Party.
Investigators launched a corruption investigation after former FPOe CEO Heinz-Christian Strache was photographed appearing to offer public contracts in exchange for FPOe’s campaign help.
Some of them are aimed at senior People’s Party figures, including Brummel.
Kurz is also under investigation for allegedly making false statements to the Parliament’s Corruption Committee, but he has not been charged.
The main opposition Social Democratic Party stated that Wednesday’s raid showed that the BJP “house of cards is collapsing vigorously” and criticized the Kurtz party for “slandering the independent judiciary and trying to obstruct its investigation.”
At present, well-known Green Party politicians remain cautious about the latest allegations, which broke out a few days after the government announced a carbon tax as part of its tax system’s flagship “eco-society” reform.
Vice President Werner Kogler told reporters that the raid had no effect on the coalition’s ability to govern.
However, he did oppose the BJP’s description of the raid as a performance, stating that the arrest warrant requires the approval of the judge.
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