The orders were now canceled on Monday, confirmed the Ministry of Finance on Monday of the APA information of the association Momentum Institute.
Specifically, according to the Ministry of Finance, a leg scrape study on the subject of crypto currencies and a Karmasin study on the subject of budget policy in a European context were recently carried out. “Against the background of the current development”, however, the ministry asked the financial procurator to “examine the contractual situation for these two studies and what options there are”, as stated on the homepage of the socially liberal think tank Momentum Institute. Today, Monday, the finance department canceled the studies. A spokesman for the ministry was unable to provide any information about the costs of the studies, given that attempts are currently being made to get out of the contracts.
The Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) is investigating against Beinschab and the then family minister Karmasin, who was nominated by the VP, in connection with allegedly manipulated surveys, which were commissioned by the then Finance Ministry Secretary General Thomas Schmid at “Research Affairs” and then should have appeared in the media group “Austria”. The aim of the campaign is said to have been to briefly pave the way to the VP top and ultimately to the Chancellery. The ministry is said to have been “hijacked” the costs for the fudged surveys via “bogus bills”.
The finance department emphasizes to the APA that Minister Gernot Blmel (VP), on October 8, i.e. two days after the house searches in the VP area, in consultation with the financial procurator, the internal audit of the ministry with a review of the allocation of all advertisements and studies of the Communications department from 2015 onwards. It was not possible to say on Monday when the results should be available. No specifications were made here. In any case, it had been agreed that no public statements would be made until the results were available. In principle, since Blmel took office in 2020, the Ministry of Finance has published all surveys on its homepage and economic analyzes commissioned by the department on the homepages of the respective economic research institutes.
