Former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz – who, as Asaf Gilad revealed in Globes, is heading a new company in the cyber field together with NSO founder Julio Shalov – is “significantly incriminated” by comprehensive testimony from those who were his right-hand man; This is what the media in Austria reported in the last day.
According to leaks from the investigation against Kurtz, who is suspected, among other things, of corruption offenses that include financing the publication of sympathetic and biased polls with government funds, his associate Thomas Schmid immediately placed the responsibility for the actions on him and said that he was the one who initiated them.
● Austria’s chancellor is suspected of having “bought” positive tabloid coverage in exchange for government budgets
● The corruption case in Austria: Kurtz claims media persecution and the construction of a case by the legal system
The correspondence on Schmid’s mobile phone, seized as part of another investigation, are the ones that aroused the suspicion of the Austrian prosecution, which revealed a “conspiracy” that included the publication of fictitious polls that painted Kurz as a “rising star” in the sky of the conservative party during 2016 and 2017, and gave him a boost in the race for the presidency the party, from which he occupied the position of chancellor. When he was first elected, in 2017, Kurtz was the youngest prime minister in Europe, at only 31 years old. Since then he has been involved in a series of scandals, until he retired last year and announced that he had decided to “turn to private business”.
Kurtz strongly denies the accusations against him and said that he will fight for his innocence in court.
A secret mechanism
As part of the ongoing investigation against him, the investigators collected a detailed testimony from Schmid, parts of which were published and now leaked to the Austrian and German media. The testimony was collected for 15 days. According to the reports, Schmid told the investigators that together with Kurtz they allegedly set up a secret mechanism that channeled government funds both to a survey institute that conducted surveys that were apparently altered, and to the newspaper that published them – the tabloid “Austria” – using government advertising funds.
“The suspicions as they are presented against Kurtz are true,” Schmid told the investigators, according to a report this morning in “Spiegel”, adding that he carried out the actions “only because Kurtz ordered me to do it.” Schmid, who was a senior in the Austrian Ministry of Finance during Kurtz’s race for party leadership, said: “I promoted the conservative party and Kurtz from within the Ministry of Finance and used the ministry’s resources to push forward Kurtz’s candidacy.”
According to reports, Schmid told investigators that he is now confessing to the acts because he spoke with his elderly mother. She told him that he must confess “if he did something against the law”. He also accused Kurtz of trying to tamper with evidence, after in October 2021, after the investigation began, he asked him “if something could be done to delete the communications with the polling institute.”
As mentioned, Kurtz denies the accusations. Charges have not yet been filed in the case.