The video of an alcoholic night in Ibiza published on May 17, 2019 by the German online media Süddeutsche.de and Spiegel Online was not only the beginning of the end of the federal government Sebastian Kurz I, but also perhaps the biggest political scandal in Austria’s post-war history. At the time, the two investigative journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, the authors of the book “The Ibiza Affair”, were in charge of the research. At the invitation of the “Literaturschiff” initiative, the two will be guests on Friday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Arbeitswelt Museum. Susanne Pollinger will moderate the book talk.
FP boss Heinz-Christian Strache and his party friend Johann Gudenus vacationed in Ibiza in the summer of 2017. A trap was set for them in a luxury villa: the purchase of the Kronen Zeitung by an allegedly extremely rich oligarch’s niece could have won the FP elections and made Strache chancellor. A secretly recorded video was shown to Obermayer and Obermaier in early summer 2018. What happened next is contemporary history and an exciting lesson in journalism, a look behind the scenes of politics.
Obermaier is an investigative journalist for Der Spiegel and a bestselling author. Since April 2022 he has been running the company “paper trail media” together with Obermayer, which focuses on international investigative research. Before that, he worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung for more than twelve years, where he was most recently deputy head of the investigative research department.
Together with Bastian Obermayer, he initiated the Panama Papers research, which was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 2017, and the Paradise Papers revelations. Obermaier’s work has received the Nannen Prize, the Wächter Prize, the CNN Prize, the German Journalist Prize and the Reporter Prize, among others.
Source: Nachrichten
