Misused government money, influencing the press, incriminating app conversations. After police raids on ministries, the ÖVP party office and the chancellery Wednesday Austria is amazed at an unprecedented political scandal. The lightning career of 35-year-old Chancellor Sebastian Kurz appears to be the result of bribery, political scheming and abuse of power.
Austrians already speak of House of Kurz, the comparison with the Machiavellian Frank Underwood from the American Netflix series House of Cards after all, insists. With massaged polls, Kurz would have first capitulated his own party leader, then won the chancellorship. The script for this was called unambiguous Ballhausplatz project, to the official residence of the Austrian head of government.
“Short survived a lot already crises on allegations, but now it will be very difficult for him,” thinks Germany correspondent Wouter Zwart. “He and the entire clique around him, who call themselves De Familie, are called by name. There seems to have been a clear campaign to put Kurz on the shield.”
Short game
Austrian prosecutors happened to come across reports of the popularity campaign in app conversations on confiscated phones. The Public Prosecution Service names ten people, including Kurz himself and his closest collaborators. “Sebastian Kurz was the linchpin, all crimes have been primarily in his interest,” the prosecutor said.
Kurz was a political prodigy, Hope for the future of his conservative Volkspartei, which struggled on the right to find a response to the populist FPÖ. State secretary at the age of 24, foreign minister three years later and ambitions to become chancellor in 2017.
“He had the image of a young, handsome politician, as we also got to know Obama, Trudeau and Macron at the time,” says Zwart. “Without the publicity campaign he is now accused of, he might have survived. You can ask yourself: a boy like that doesn’t need that, does he?”
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