On Tuesday it was announced that ex-BAG boss Thomas Schmid had approached the Public Prosecution Service for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) to possibly obtain leniency status. And that he testified for 15 days about the Casino affair. The first passages from the confession weigh heavily on ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
A climate of fear. A mood that can be more than guessed from the testimony protocols. It’s October 2021. Sebastian Kurz is nervous. Schmid states: “He called me about the searches and told me that I now had to provide a written statement that he knew nothing about all these allegations and that I should take all the blame.”
A meeting followed after Kurz tried several times to call Schmid. A meeting in the political academy of the ÖVP. “He said he wasn’t mad at me. I said I didn’t even know these backups existed.” In short, Schmid asked him to publish the “Kastl”.
Ex-chancellor wanted to arrange the chats himself
Kurz wanted to take care of the chats himself so that the ÖVP and the entire country would not go under. The former ÖVP boss urged Schmid to send him the chats, including those about his closest advisers Bernhard Bonelli, Gerald Fleischmann, Johannes Frischmann and Axel Melchior. All this can be seen in context with the “leg scraper tool”.
Then he utters a sentence in front of the accusers that will shake Kurz and his confidants. “I have promoted the VP and Kurz of the Ministry of Finance, using the resources of the Ministry of Finance to support the progress of the ÖVP under Kurz”.
Advertisements were “bookable at short notice”
And Schmid explains how the ads were placed during the 2017 election campaign.” Fleischmann (a close confidant of Kurz) said the ministry’s listings should be booked on ‘Kurz’, meaning Kurz could dictate which topics and which ones. reporting would be placed in the media group Austria in return.”
These sentences are a heavy burden for Sebastian Kurz. But that’s not all: Schmid also accused Wolfgang Sobotka – he allegedly intervened at the Treasury Department over a tax audit of the Alois Mock Institute. And Schmid also says about the wolf cause: “The suspicion presented in the file also applies”.
Source: Krone
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