Austrian Chancellor under investigation for false testimony before Parliament

The Austrian Prosecutor's Office against economic and corruption crimes (WKStA) has opened an investigation against the federal chancellor, the conservative Sebastian Kurz, of course false testimony before a parliamentary commission, as confirmed on Wednesday by the head of government himself.

In a brief appearance before the press, Kurz admitted opening a preliminary investigation against him and his chief of staff, Bernhard Bonelli.. The WkStA accuses both of having made false statements to the parliamentary commission investigating the so-called “Ibiza case”, a corruption scandal that came to light at the end of May 2019 with the publication of a video filmed with secret cameras in a farm on that Spanish island in the summer of 2017.

“I always made an effort, and for hours, to answer all the questions to the best of my ability, within what I could remember, and according to the truth, despite the fact that they are about issues from years ago and that have nothing to do with the main themes of my activity as head of government”, said Kurz. After ruling out that the case could lead him to resign, he commented that it is a process launched by a single judge, before whom he will have “great pleasure” to answer a questioning.

The leader of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) acknowledged that the WKStA could file a criminal complaint at any time, and even said he assumed that this would happen, although he predicted that “it will not have any consequences”. According to some media, the Prosecutor's Office assumes, among others, that when the parliamentary commission asked to access the foreign minister's emails, he hid the existence of one of the three email addresses he was using.

The ÖVP recently advocated for the abolition of the obligation to declare the truth in a parliamentary commission, in order to ensure that those questioned do not resort to their right not to declare. The “Ibiza case” triggered in 2019 the fall of the coalition between Kurz's popular and the ultranationalist party FPÖ and the call for new elections after which the current government was formed between conservatives and Los Verdes.

In the 2018 filming, the former leader of the FPÖ Heinz-Christian Strache appears proposing to an alleged Russian oligarch to sell him shares in state companies in exchange for political favors.