Critical comments on the establishment of the Covid-Aid Financing Agency (Cofag) and its working methods come not only from the Court of Auditors and the opposition, which sees their years of criticism confirmed. The Viennese lawyer Alfred Nemetschke has been in a permanent clinch with the federal funding company for two years.
“If only we had done it like Switzerland: the tax offices paid out the support there. The application and processing went through the house banks. They know their customers, submitted them, the tax office automatically checked for plausibility and paid out within a few days,” says Nemetschke. “That’s how a modern administration does it.”
Because, according to Nemetschke, an “unsuspecting group” acted, he is not surprised by the high consulting costs. As reported, the Court of Audit totaled 21 million euros in consultant invoices from April 2020 to June 2021 and criticized this in a rough report.
According to Neos MP Karin Doppelbauer, consultants who had previously taken on well-paid mandates in the state-related area also came into play. Schönherr Rechtsanwälte accompanied the sale of Hypo for years. The PR consultant is also the same as Gaisberg Consulting in both cases. “It’s always the same consultants who show up when government companies are involved, take on expensive mandates and then take on free services for the party.” SPÖ vice club leader Jörg Leichtfried spoke yesterday of a “self-service shop for Turkish and VP-related advisors”.
notice instead of notice
The Neos also saw the tax offices as responsible from the start. All opposition parties have repeatedly criticized that the legal position of funding recipients is worse vis-à-vis Cofag than vis-à-vis the tax office. “The entrepreneur receives a message from Cofag. There is a decision from the tax office that I can appeal against. I can only bring a private law action against Cofag,” says Doppelbauer.
Lawyer Nemetschke, who represents the Viennese café operator Berndt Querfeld, reserves the right to file such lawsuits against Cofag. He also takes issue with the manual approach: Guidelines have been tightened in the middle of the ongoing processing. The lawyer specializing in real estate law means the unclear legal situation in relation to the rent. Because it has still not been clearly decided before the Supreme Court whether rents were rightly not paid. Cofag requires commercial tenants to demonstrate great efforts to minimize rental expenses.
Legally unsound help
In the meantime, Cofag is getting support from the tax authorities, which is not legally correct, according to Doppelbauer. Finance conducts audits. In the process, repayments of subsidies are identified. According to Nemetschke, Cofag will have to sue thousands of companies because “everything is completely contradictory”. He contradicted all claims on behalf of his client. His conclusion: “What Blümel and Co. have done to Cofag is remarkable.”
Doppelbauer notes that not all eligible individuals have received payments. (sib)
Source: Nachrichten
