Schmid zu Kurz: – “The stupid cow sent out bills”

Schmid’s interrogation protocols went public on Tuesday, leading to massive charges against Kurz and other close confidants in several cases. The former employee of several ÖVP ministers approached the Public Prosecution Service in April with a leniency request, the prosecutor for economics and corruption announced on Tuesday. According to the WKStA, no formal leniency application has been submitted to date. Since June, a total of 15 full-day interrogations have taken place.

Schmid put enormous pressure on Kurz
Schmid accused the former chancellor. Kurz knew that his employees were funded by the Treasury Department for studies that would help him win the party chairmanship of the ÖVP and the office of the chancellor. “Yes, he was aware of that. It is very important for me to emphasize that I only implemented this tool because I received the order from Kurz. I implemented this tool for Kurz.” It was clear to Kurz that it could only be financed by the Treasury Department, Schmid said: “I promoted Kurz and the ÖVP of the BMF, used the resources of the BMF to support the progress of the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz.”

As early as Tuesday evening, Kurz’s lawyer Suppan had described the statements as “false”, a day later a new counterattack was launched and it was announced that the recording of a telephone conversation had been handed over to the authorities. “This tape recording represents a bombshell for the current state of the investigation and massively refutes the statements Thomas Schmid made during the interrogations to become a crown witness,” Suppan emphasized in a written statement.

“They build their own stories”
On 6 October 2021, house searches took place in the Chancellery, among other things. In the telephone conversation with Schmid on October 18, 2021, Kurz repeatedly asked how he was involved in the survey affair. Schmid then explains to him roughly how the collaboration with pollster Sabine Beinschab went. Kurz asks why he had such a thing done. “They build their own stories together,” Schmid replies.

“What are they criminally accusing us of, can you explain that somehow?” asks Kurz Schmid, according to the transcript, because he can’t sleep anymore and doubts himself if he forgot something. “But I didn’t tell you in any way… We never gave you an order, or we didn’t even talk about ads and things like that… Or I never told you to order the leg scraper now .” According to protocol, Schmid doesn’t contradict on this point: “Well, but that’s the bad thing you just… that they build their own history, yeah.”

“Idiot Cow Sent Around Bills”
Beinschab did surveys once a week, “and then you just added 1-2 questions, yeah,” explains Schmid according to protocol. “That stupid cow then sends those bills around and what they do now, that was all an order, that was a completely different matter.” Neither he nor Johannes Frischmann (then at the Treasury Department and later Kurz’s spokesman as Chancellor) would have commissioned millions of ads, but these were major campaigns that the Treasury Department ran continuously.

“But that means you believe it can be cleared up, even these things,” Kurz says. “Yes … I … you have to do everything you can to make that clear”, Schmid is said to have replied. “I just find it so bizarre, how can you say I ordered it. Or I would have provoked it. Somehow I don’t understand,” Kurz said later. “I just think it’s so brutal that you can accuse me of that. I could explode any day.” “Yeah, yeah, and that’s the bad thing about them, because they build their own stories and then they draw all kinds of people to them, yeah,” Schmid replied, according to the transcript. How do you come up with the sedition charge, “That I can’t answer for you”, “That’s what they say, yes”.

WKStA determined against Kurz and his environs
The WKStA has been investigating Kurz, his closest professional environment, Schmid, former Minister of Family Affairs Sophie Karmasin (ÖVP), pollster Beinschab and – according to the Association Responsibility Act – also against the ÖVP himself for some time. WKStA assumes that the budget resources of the Ministry of Finance, exclusively party politically motivated, partially manipulated surveys in the interest of Kurz and thus also the ÖVP were created and published at the expense of the taxpayer in the media group “Austria”. There are suspicions of infidelity, corruption and bribery, abuse of public authority and other crimes.