SPÖ MP Jan Krainer published tax details of ÖVP’s major donor Pierer in 2017. Whereupon the Office for Internal Affairs took action – unlawful, judges the data protection authority.
The ÖVP-led Ministry of Finance searched for an SPÖ informant in autumn 2017. This would show previously unpublished documents, which are available to the “Standard”, the ORF and “profil”. According to a decision by the data protection authority, this investigation was unlawful, it said.
The trigger was that SPÖ MP Jan Krainer published tax details of VP major donor and KTM boss Stefan Pierer in 2017 by means of a parliamentary request, in the middle of the high phase of the National Council election campaign. It was placed in the room that Pierer had transferred money from the Principality to Austria before a tax agreement with Liechtenstein entered into force. The then finance minister Hans Jörg Schelling (ÖVP) had filed a complaint after the publication of the tax data for violating official secrecy to the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA).
Skills exceeded
At the same time, the in-house office for internal affairs (BIA) is said to have been set up to find Krainers’ informant. Supposedly, the documents available to the three media would now show that the search for clues was not only large, but also legally problematic. According to the file material, the BIA had interpreted its competencies very broadly and independently, without waiting for official investigations, as the “profil” reported online.
The BIA is said not only to have analyzed “log files” of numerous tax officials, but also to have suspected suspects. The act of Ministry of Finance ended up with around 8000 pages. The leak was still not found.
(APA)
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