Questioned in U Committee – COFAG Manager: “Never Intervention Allowed”

At COFAG, the auditors of the Court of Audit not only criticized the design of the corona aid, but also the establishment and appointment of the management and control bodies and the personal relationship with the parent company ABBAG. On the other hand, Schimpel praised COFAG’s work in his research, as did his counterpart on the ÖVP side, Bernhard Perner, who was invited about two weeks ago. Schimpel explained that he first joined COFAG as an interim director and then was appointed after an advertisement.

“COFAG has achieved its goal”
To date, 1.3 million applications have been processed, many of them in a short period of time. According to Schimpel, COFAG has served its purpose. There has never been any influence on the activity or interventions in this regard. If anyone wanted to influence the decision, they would have made a racket, he insisted: “I would never have allowed an intervention.” But e-mails with questions came to him from many sides, so he contacted him.

He worked well with Perner. “We both attended and both worked a lot,” says Schimpel. He has no idea about Perner’s workload at ABBAG. And as far as salary levels are concerned, the chairman of the supervisory board should be questioned. In any case, he knows that the benchmark for this came from the banking sector. His salary was at the lower end, Perner’s at the mid-range. However, it is up to the Supervisory Board to determine that.

External consultants due to protracted pandemic
Schimpel justified the repeated use of external advisory services because COFAG’s organizational model was always based on a 12-month period, which was believed to be the end of the pandemic. “We built COFAG with this logic.” When the second wave came and new aid was implemented within a short time, we again had to resort to external sources.

Before the investigation, ÖVP party leader Andreas Hanger stressed that the Court’s criticisms were “taken very seriously” and recalled that COFAG was a “coalition government project”. Consequently, the Greens should also “take responsibility”. Schimpel, who is credited to the Greens, was charged according to Hanger because they wanted to “scrutinize” his order. After all, Schimpel was the office manager of the Greens. Nina Tomaselli, leader of the Green Chamber, mainly wanted to investigate questionable salary structures, such as the double salary of former COFAG director Perner.

Christian Hafenecker, leader of the FPÖ, said in advance that the Greens would have done nothing else than the ÖVP with the choice of Schimpel as general manager: namely, send a shop assistant to the corona financing office. Schimpel previously also worked for the management consultancy PwC, joined COFAG without a cooling-off phase and PwC subsequently received consultancy assignments, Hafenecker criticized.

Another load of Schmids usable?
An extension of the U-committee until the end of January or the beginning of February has now been tabled in the House. The reason for this is Thomas Schmid, ex-Secretary General at the Ministry of Finance and potential key witness, who did not answer any questions during his interrogation. It needs to be reloaded. ÖVP politician Hanger stressed that a new indictment from ex-ÖBAG boss Schmid was welcomed. However, it’s questionable whether the investigation makes any sense at all, as the Federal Administrative Court recognized Schmid’s denials as legal when he first appeared.

Discussions are currently underway between the political groups on the details of a possible continuation of the committee, which the SPÖ, NEOS and FPÖ, who set up the U committee, have to decide. SPÖ and FPÖ had always voted in favor of an extension. The NEOS initially blocked this, but at least supports another questioning of Thomas Schmid. The discussions will include how long the U committee will be extended and how many survey days there should be. The final decision must be made no later than Friday, December 9 – the hearing ends on this day.