The 146 pages sketch a “turquoise-blue parallel system”, said parliamentary group leader Nina Tomaselli at the presentation: “We have found self-enrichment, we have allegedly found corruption and cheating on a large scale.” The turquoise-run Ministry of Finance was the hub.
At the beginning they “did not think that we would actually find so much evidence of the alleged buyability of the turquoise-blue federal government – but we did,” said Tomaselli. First, they tried to subject every single statement by ex-FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache in the Ibiza video to a reality test. One has penetrated into the “darkest corners”. And it has been shown that “a lot of what Strache has announced has been put into practice,” said Tomaselli: “Just not everything by him and much more professionally.”
Turquoise-blue tried to install a parallel system, past parliament and past the population. Profiteers should be the wealthy and patrons. The files also testified to the power with which this system operated. And the popular chats brought to light a moral image of politics that many Austrians did not want to get to know.
“One of the main hubs was the turquoise-run finance ministry,” emphasized the green parliamentary leader. This is mainly due to the person Thomas Schmid (former head of cabinet and ex-ÖBAG boss). “He was right in the thick of things instead of just being there,” whether it was about privatizations or item haggling. Right at the top of the latter was Schmid’s appointment as sole director of ÖBAG, according to Tomaselli: “That was a postponed game.”
The files supplied by the execution of the Vienna Regional Court also provided new information. This would refute two central statements about the Edelstein project, i.e. the planned privatization of the Federal Computing Center (BRZ). The deliberations on the project had not been shelved after the Post data scandal, nor was it merely in the idea stage, argued the green parliamentary group leader. A new strategy paper has been found where the privatization plans are listed – “far from an initial stage or brainstorming”.
Tomaselli does not see the fact that the new findings can be seen as evidence that the U-Committee ended too early: “No, the knowledge is not lost.” The files could be searched further until the end of the U Committee. “We will do that until the very last day – clarification until the end.”
Of course, there are still enough questions and threads that could be investigated, according to Tomaselli, such as the Wirecard scandal and its relation to Austria. However, the U-Committee is a minority right, so it is also up to it to establish a new one.
And the Greens also provided their own balance sheet: 116 surveys were carried out over 52 days. These included 84 men and 21 women. 23 of them were politicians, 19 civil servants, nine public prosecutors and two police officers. The survey lasted a total of 493 hours. 2.7 million file pages in 182,053 documents were delivered.
