A private tunnel to access your villa: the project of Wolfgang Porsche, grandson of the founder of the luxury car brand, is causing a stir in the Austrian city of Salzburg, which will have to publicly discuss the subject in May.
Some representatives shouted in the sky since they learned of an agreement between the 81 -year -old heir and the former conservative mayor to dig an underground tunnel in the Kapuzinerberg, a hill in municipal land.
Ecologist Ingóberg Haller, who has led the protest, denounces that the contract became “hidden, in the most absolute secret”, so he rejects any “favor to the Superrists.”
In addition, the project is carried out in a “sensitive natural environment, in the heart of a place declared World Heritage by UNESCO”.
Thanks to this 500 -meter tunnel, the Porsche family heir wants to have easier access to his house acquired in 2020 and is in full renewal, without having to use the narrow road that leads to the top, with ice during winters and is also very frequented by tourists and hikers in summer.
The Jewish writer Stefan Zweig lived there between 1919 and 1934 and wrote some of his best works before fleeing his homeland in the rise of Nazism.
To obtain permission, the president of the Supervision Council of the Automobile Giant paid 40,000 euros last year.
“It would have been more prudent to inform public opinion before,” AFP Christian Hacker, chief of cabinet of the new mayor, social democrat, told AFP Friday.
Is the “morally acceptable and according to the times tunnel? It does not correspond to me”, but the procedure was carried out in accordance with the norms, said the current mayor, remembering that “all men are the same before the law, regardless of the thickness of their portfolio.”
Given the criticism, the city commissioned an expert to study the case and this considered the amount paid for the right of passage, according to a report published this week.
As for the desire of the billionaire to build a parking lot of 10 to 12 seats, that will require a modification of the urban plan that has to be approved by the Mayor’s Office at a meeting scheduled for May 14.
Contacted by the AFP, a Wolfgang Porsche representative declined to comment on “a private matter”, without any relationship with Porsche, a company that is owned by the Volkswagen Group.
Source: Ambito
