She has charged the two businessmen and other people for allegedly bribing the green politician Christoph Chorherr from Vienna. The WKStA claims that Canon has received donations for the S2Arch association and has been at the service of real estate investors, for example in the development of areas.
Between 2010 and 2020, the Greens belonged to Vienna’s city government. The canon was only a local council, i.e. a member of the city parliament, but in this function he was also planning spokesman in the field of urban development with a good connection to the city government. And he acted as chairman of the S2Arch association, which among other things financed training centers in South Africa.
The WKStA has been investigating since autumn 2017. She also analyzed bank records, which, she says, enabled “association donations to be allocated to real estate projects”.
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The case is sensational because well-known personalities are under indictment. Otherwise he joins various investigations that Austria’s public prosecutors conduct against politicians and business people.
An end to the “Freunderlwirtschaft”?
This has sparked heated controversy in Austria. Are the allegedly politically more left-wing prosecutors leading a crusade against bourgeois Austria, as former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz claims? Or is a new generation of public prosecutors just taking their job seriously and doing away with Austria’s notorious “Freunderlwirtschaft”?
The former Chancellor of Austria lost his immunity.
(Photo: dpa)
The political system was badly shaken in February when the WKStA carried out a house search of Finance Minister Gernot Blümel because of a matter that had occurred in 2017.
At that time, Harald Neumann, the boss of the gaming machine manufacturer Novomatic, asked Blümel for an appointment with Sebastian Kurz in an SMS message. That year he was still foreign minister.
The manager wanted to discuss two things, first “a donation”, second “a problem in Italy”. The judiciary will judge whether there is a connection “donation against official act”. Blümel and Neumann assure that no money has flowed.
Austria’s political system completely shook in October. It became known that the WKStA was investigating Chancellor Kurz. The sworn circle with which the politician has surrounded himself is said to have bought benevolent reporting from the newspaper “Austria”. Kurz himself is suspected by the prosecutors of having instigated the faithful to do so. The Chancellor was politically unsustainable and had to resign.
Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz resigns
“The Austrian definition of corruption is now strictly and narrowly defined,” says Alois Birklbauer, professor of criminal law at the University of Linz. In the past, Greco, a group of countries within the Council of Europe dedicated to the fight against corruption, was repeatedly criticized for its lax legislation.
As a result, the laws have been tightened. However, some say: beyond the healthy level. “We are currently overtaxing,” says a well-known tax lawyer. The Austrians have a sloppy relationship to the law, now it is “over-corrected”.
There is no professional distance
It seems as if the judiciary is driving out peculiarities from Austrians, some of which are social phenomena. “The aim of the strict criminal law against corruption is to trigger a change in mentality,” says Birklbauer. The principle “one hand washes the other” is widespread in the country, at least as an expectation.
Generally speaking, Austrians are relaxed, humorous and cheerful people. Contacts are made quickly; However, this quickly leads to the expectation that one is there for one another in the event of problems.
This unhealthy closeness is also expressed in the chats Tojner and Chorherr sent each other: it is striking, for example, how the politician lacked professional distance from real estate projects and investors.
Austria has far fewer inhabitants than Germany. That means: you know each other. But that’s not the only difference between the two countries: Germany has several centers, which creates distance. Vienna’s first district, on the other hand, is the clear social center of Austria, where the elite almost constantly runs into each other.
Therefore it is somehow significant that Novomatic boss Neumann chose the “small official channel” and Finance Minister Blümel sent a chat message. Such a spontaneous reaction may be due to the ubiquity of the smartphone in everyday life, but it doesn’t explain everything.
Neumann apparently preferred to let relationships play, as is sometimes the custom in Austria. The manager could also have officially sent a “three-line” to the Ministry of Finance, says the aforementioned tax lawyer. There specialists would then have taken care of the problem.
The barter transactions in business and politics in Austria have many shades. The coming months will show what is compatible with the hard line that the judiciary is apparently pursuing.
“General preventive effect” due to the Strache case
The former Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache from the right-wing populist FPÖ has already felt it. In August he was given a suspended sentence of 15 months because, according to the court, he had a businessman friend pay him for political advances.
Strache did not personally enrich himself, however, and the donated sums were relatively small at 2000 and 10,000 euros. However, this does not play a role in Austrian law. “There is no lower limit for illegal activities,” says Birklbauer.
Even a donation of one cent is considered corruption, and according to today’s view, only the “three K” (calendar, ballpoint pen, Klumpert) can be considered as the usual national attention.
In August Strache received a suspended sentence of 15 months in prison.
(Photo: Getty Images)
The judge in the Strache case hopes that the judgment will also have a “general preventive effect” in this regard. She also sees the guilty verdict as a means of strengthening compatriots’ trust in the political system.
However, hardly any of the cases mentioned are unambiguous because they partly follow the tradition of the legally elusive “friend economy”. Kurz did benefit politically from the positive reporting in “Austria”; however, the public prosecutor’s office does not seem to have any solid evidence that he instigated his followers.
No semblance of connection
And, while a powerful politician with connections, the Canon was a councilor with limited powers. In Vienna, too, dozens of government agencies bend over a building project before it can be implemented.
Countless private individuals and institutions have donated to the Chorherrs Verein. In 2011, Benko’s company Signa transferred the sum of 100,000 euros. Signa announced that you donate regularly to social projects, especially in the field of youth work. In 2012, Benko acquired a plot of land near the new Vienna Central Station from ÖBB, and in 2015 the 100-person local council finally approved the rededication of the site.
It is a long process with many imponderables. A close connection between donation and official acts does not seem to exist, at least from a layman’s point of view. But Austria’s judiciary wants to tidy up: From their point of view, says Birklbauer, there should not be the appearance of a connection between official acts and donations.
More: Charges against Galeria owner René Benko in Austria