Strache Trial – Stieglitz wanted messages from Brother Asfinag

The prosecution for affairs and corruption accuses Stieglitz of bribery and his friend and former FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache of bribery. The trial of the two at the Vienna Regional Court continued on Thursday, focusing on Stieglitz’s appointment to Asfinag’s supervisory board and his interest in further mandates in the bodies of state-related companies, especially at ÖBB-Holding. For example, the question is raised whether the real estate entrepreneur was sufficiently qualified for this. Hartwig Hufnagl, then deputy chief of staff at the Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology and the board of directors of Asfinag, replied in the affirmative. “He was very, very well prepared. He was very involved and certainly showed his real estate expertise.” At the same time, the witness objected that it was not his job to check Stieglitz’s qualifications.

Who promised a job at ÖBB?
Hufnagl was friends with him, but did not help him get the job at Asfinag, nor did he intervene at ÖBB Holding. Stieglitz, in turn, said that Hufnagl had told him that Stieglitz’s brother was needed in Asfinag. A prosecutor with chats explained that the entrepreneur also wanted a supervisory board mandate for his next of kin, and Stieglitz apparently had real prospects of a position at ÖBB. However, it is not yet clear by whom.

The witnesses don’t want it to be that way. “I told him that the holding company’s supervisory board is complete. Nothing is free,” says Philipp Trattner, then a speaker in Strache’s cabinet and now head of the Department of Sports. However, Trattner offered him “a free mandate in the Post Box” (a subsidiary of ÖBB since 2003), which Stieglitz declined: “He was obsessed with holding.”

According to his own statements, Arnold Schiefer, CFO of ÖBB-Holding and a member of the FPÖ until 2019, did not stand up for Stieglitz either. “At most, the public prosecutor will find another text.” The chairman of ÖBB’s supervisory board would have preferred a tax adviser, but Schiefer was not involved in these considerations. The prosecution for affairs and corruption currently assumes that at least, contrary to his statement, Trattner was involved in Stieglitz’s attempts to get seats in ÖBB Holding and also in the association, or at least knew about it. . “Sigi will get the next vacancy in the holding”, one message reads, in another “Sigi will be sent to the association.”

“Aspiration is something positive”
For Stieglitz it was incomprehensible on Thursday “that it is presented as negative” to take on duties in state-related companies. “That you are ambitious is a positive thing.” At the end of the hearing, a note from a prosecutor caused a stir. She is accused of sending the entrepreneur a page from a basic course script on the duties and structure of a board of directors after meeting him by chance at a hairdresser’s visit and starting a conversation with him. “But that’s good. The more information you get, the better,” said the defendant.

At the end of February 2020, Stieglitz was dismissed from Asfinag’s supervisory board by the responsible minister, Leonore Gewessler (Greens). According to the indictment, Strache allegedly gave him the post for donations to the FPÖ-affiliated association “Austria in Motion”. Both deny the allegations. The trial will continue next Thursday, when judgments can also follow.