The EU Parliament takes action on allegations of infidelity and misuse of funding. It is about the allegation that cell phone bills of Strache’s children were paid by the FPÖ parliamentary club.
The European Parliament lifted the immunity of the FPÖ delegation leader Harald Vilimsky on Thursday. According to the underlying parliamentary report, the Vienna Public Prosecutor had applied for the waiver of immunity in order to initiate criminal proceedings for the breach of trust and misuse of funding. Vilimsky called the allegations “baseless and easy to refute”.
The background is the expense affair about the former FPÖ federal chairman Heinz-Christian Strache. In essence, the allegations are about the fact that the Strache’s children’s phone numbers were paid for through the FPÖ parliamentary club, Vilimsky told the Austria Press Agency when asked.
“Never had status to authorize contract”
Vilimsky was the financial officer of the Freedom Parliamentary Club from 2006 to 2019 and, according to the EU Parliamentary Report, is said to have “abused the authority to dispose of bank accounts of the Freedom Parliamentary Club in the National Council of the Republic of Austria” by “paying bills by means of regular transfers from the Freedom Parliamentary Club’s account in the National Council for Purely Privately Used Cellular Services “.
“I never had a status with Telekom to authorize a contract,” said Vilimsky. The head of the FPÖ delegation also criticized the fact that this case had already been investigated against him for a year, “if the immunity was maintained”, and that he was accusing the Federal Criminal Police Office of this.
(WHAT)