Austrian authorities raided the offices and party headquarters of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in Vienna on Wednesday amid suspicion that he and his inner circle conspired to embezzle public funds to bribe pollsters and prominent media figures in return for favorable coverage.
The raids marked a significant escalation of prosecutors’ corruption probe into Kurz, who already faces possible indictment in a separate case involving perjury allegations related to sworn testimony he gave before a parliamentary inquiry last year.
Though some opposition leaders called on the conservative chancellor to resign, the head of Kurz’s junior coalition partner, Greens leader Werner Kogler, signaled he would not abandon the alliance as long as it remained “capable of governing.”
Nonetheless, given the gravity of the accusations, the chancellor faces — unprecedented in Austria’s democratic history — a sudden collapse of Kurz’s government remains a distinct possibility. It’s clear from court filings published on Wednesday that the prosecutors’ primary target is Kurz, whom they describe as the “central person” in the affair and the primary beneficiary of the alleged criminal behavior.
The leader of the opposition Social Democrats, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, said that if Kurz “had any decency left” he would resign, demanding that he appear before parliament to answer questions about the affair.
Kurz, speaking from the EU’s Western Balkans summit in Slovenia after the raids, dismissed the latest accusations as “manufactured” and predicted, as he has done with previous allegations, that he and his colleagues would be exonerated.
“I’m convinced that these charges will also soon be proved to be false,” he said.
Yet the evidence uncovered by authorities suggests that Kurz’s troubles may only be just beginning.
Corruption prosecutors now suspect the chancellor and his close associates used funds from the conservative-led finance ministry in 2016 while Kurz was foreign minister to pay for manipulated polling data that was subsequently published by Österreich, a Kurz-friendly tabloid, according to a more than 100-page search warrant published by Austrian media.
The ministry’s payments to a local polling firm, totaling €140,000, were allegedly disguised by falsifying invoices that claimed the work concerned “anti-corruption studies.” In return for carrying the polls, Österreich allegedly received lucrative ad campaigns from the finance ministry for hundreds of thousands of euros.
The publishers of Österreich have denied any wrongdoing and said the authorities’ suspicions appeared to be rooted in “serious misunderstandings.”
As with the other recent investigations into Kurz’s circle, prosecutors relied heavily on text message exchanges discovered on the phone of Thomas Schmid, a Kurz confidant who at the time served as general secretary in the finance ministry.
At the time of the activity now under scrutiny, Kurz, then 30, was keen to raise his public standing. The reason: Behind the scenes he and his allies were planning to seize the leadership of his Austrian People’s Party and subsequently trigger new elections — steps they took in mid-2017, leading to Kurz’s ascension as chancellor. They called the plan, which they sketched out in a strategy paper, “Projekt Ballhausplatz” — a reference to the square in Vienna where Austria’s chancellery is located — according to media reports.
Snippets of the text message chats that came to light Wednesday between Schmid, Kurz and others in the chancellor’s inner circle suggest that the effort to strengthen Kurz’s public image went off without a hitch.
“Together, we’re pretty good,” Wolfgang Fellner, one of the owners of Österreich, wrote Schmid.
In a key exchange in January of 2017, Schmid, referring to the collaboration with Österreich, told a colleague: “I’ve never gone this far before. What a great investment … I love it.”
That day, the newspaper had published polling results indicating that the then-leader of the People’s Party, Reinhold Mitterlehner, whom Kurz was eager to replace, would likely lose an election against the incumbent Social Democratic chancellor, Christian Kern. In an interview with the paper, the pollster, who prosecutors say was part of the alleged scheme, stressed that the People’s Party would benefit from a change in leadership.
That evening, Kurz, who at the time insisted in public that he had no interest in taking over the party leadership, texted Schmid: “Thanks for Österreich today.”
Schmid’s reply: “At your service.”
A few months later, Mitterlehner resigned as leader of the People’s Party to make way for the party’s rising young star. By the end of the year, Kurz was chancellor.
