National Council chairman Wolfgang Sobotka (ÖVP) sees no corruption problem in the People’s Party “per se”. Such a general suspicion would also be “completely inappropriate” towards the party’s many officials, he said on TV on Sunday.
In the ORF “Hohes Haus” program, Sobotka also made it clear that he would preside over every second interrogation of Thomas Schmid when the time came. He again rejected the allegations made by the former Secretary-General of the Treasury.
Schmid had accused Sobotka of intervening in two tax cases involving ÖVP institutes. This came “completely out of the blue”, the president of the National Council said on Sunday. Tax advisers and the tax authorities had confirmed that no action had been taken: “These lies have short legs.”
According to his own statements, Sobotka has had a clear opinion about Schmid since 2015 and it was different from that of others, indicating that he was not one of his supporters.
As for the various allegations currently circulating, full clarification is needed. Ultimately, however, they could not be supplied by the politics and media landscape, but by the police and the courts. To curb inappropriate interventions, Sobotka insisted that such calls should be logged.
During the first interrogation of Schmid, which he had consistently refused in the ÖVP’s corruption investigation committee, the second president Doris Bures (SPÖ) chaired the meeting. Sobotka stressed that this was not because of the person who provided the information, but because of a trip to Milan that had been planned long in advance.
Time permitting, he always presides over the meeting, as stipulated in the Rules of Procedure: “I comply with the legal situation.”
Source: Krone
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