Austrian manager Siegfried Wolf has long had a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been friends with former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) for years. Wolf tried to use his connections to ease sanctions on Russia. This is evident from new chat protocols available to the COFAG-U committee.
The then Chancellor Kurz and investor Wolf actively exchanged ideas between 2018 and 2020. For example, if Kurz needs advice from the former ÖIAG boss on state investments or if the Chancellor needs to put in a good word for Wolf with the US government. Roses are also sprinkled in between, for example when Wolf thinks that a press conference by Sebastian Kurz was “very well received”. The chat logs available for the “Krone” show a close relationship between the two.
At the time, Wolf was chairman of the supervisory board of Russian car manufacturer GAZ, owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. GAZ is on the US sanctions list. In numerous messages, Wolf Kurz urgently asks for support so that the sanctions are lifted.
Call for intervention in Washington
“Today our GAZ problem will be addressed to Mr. Manuchin (meaning then US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, note). “It would therefore be extremely important if you could please call the White House and Manuchin again,” Wolf wrote to Kurz in January 2020. A little later, on January 23, 2020, he asked again if Kurz could arrange an appointment with Mnuchin for him. It’s just stupid: on January 20, 2020, Joe Biden was sworn in as the new US president – and he installed a new cabinet, Mnuchin is no longer in office.
“Meet Putin for skiing”
Even before that, Russia is always a problem. In March 2018, Wolf wrote to Kurz: “The reactions in Russia were very positive! I’m on my way to Sochi in the afternoon. Meet P (apparently Putin, mind you) for skiing or for dinner. You wanted to give me feedback.” What exactly is not clear from the files; some passages have been made illegible.
At the end of March 2018, when an EU summit was taking place in Brussels, Kurz wrote to Wolf: “Today is quite a heated meeting about Russia in Brussels. If we talk tomorrow, everything will go in a very bad direction!” At the time, the EU strongly condemned the poison attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, for which the Putin regime was blamed. Sebastian Kurz did not want to comment on the chat process.
NEOS demands clarification
For the NEOS, the current chats again suggest that Putin’s networks reached all the way to the top of the turquoise blue government. “The ÖVP should stop kidnapping children in the Russia case and rather interfere in the investigation,” said Yannick Shetty, leader of the NEOS faction in the U Commission. He again calls for a “pact of relief” in which all parties must commit to setting up a commission of inquiry into Russia after the National Council elections in the fall.
In recent decades, the three major parties FPÖ, SPÖ and ÖVP have “opened the floodgates to Russian influence,” Shetty emphasizes. The Egisto Ott espionage case made the connections between Austrian politicians and Russian decision-makers new and explosive.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
