The Independent Party Transparency Senate (UPTS), based in the Chancellery, has decided that the FPÖ must pay a fine of 41,250 euros for undeclared party donations. The reason for this is that the party has not reported election campaign advertisements from the European Parliamentary Group ENF and the Salzburg City Council as donations in kind. The FPÖ is spared another conviction thanks to the party’s two accountants, most of whom are paid by the FPÖ’s training institute.
It has been known for some time that the blue party academy pays most of the salaries of the two accountants. Because, in the view of the Court of Audit, these are inadmissible gifts in kind from the FPÖ training institute to the parent party, it has already imposed two fines for the years 2017 and 2018 totaling 190,000 euros. For 2019, however, the UPTS found the cost sharing to be in order. The fact that the educational institution was responsible for two-thirds of the personnel costs was therefore permissible because of the higher workload there.
Election campaign ads as stumbling block
On the other hand, the handling of election campaign advertisements by the European Parliamentary Group ENF and the Salzburg City Council in 2019 was presumably incorrect. newspaper “Heute”, the latter placed seven advertisements in the municipal election campaign “Salzburg News”.
Court of Audit: advertisements should have been declared as donation in kind
From the point of view of the Court of Audit and the Senate, the advertisements should have been reported as gifts in kind. Since the FPÖ made no mention of this, it would now have to pay fines of 15,000 and 26,250 euros for the two advertising packages. A spokesperson said it is currently being investigated whether the party will pay or file a complaint with the Federal Administrative Court.
Source: Krone
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