The Buwog verdict, the commercial bank crash, the Ibiza video and the Wirecard crime thriller cause excitement.
The Corona year 2020 will also go down in history as the year of criminal cases. The collapse of the commercial bank Mattersburg shook the banking landscape, and the ex-CEO and his colleague on the board are said to have been cheating for years. Two Austrians also play the leading roles in the billion-dollar Wirecard scandal, as well as in the crime thriller about the Ibiza video. Only in the Buwog corruption scandal are several main characters in the game.
Karl-Heinz Grasser
Treacherous multi-million commission leads to hefty prison sentences
“Only Grasser comes into question as an informant,” said judge Marion Hohenecker on December 4th after 168 days of negotiations and sentenced ex-finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser to eight years imprisonment for infidelity, acceptance of gifts and falsification of evidence, his witness Walter Meischberger in the Buwog criminal trial seven years and the partially confessed ex-PR advisor Peter Hochegger to six years imprisonment. The judgments are not final. The accused have filed an appeal in the hearing room.
As a reminder: In 2004, Buwog was sold for 961 million euros to a consortium led by Immofinanz; the co-bidder CA Immo had offered 960 million euros. It was not known for a long time that Meischberger and Hochegger received a commission of 9.6 million euros from Immofinanz through a Cypriot company, but did not pay tax on them.
An ex-Immofinanz board unpacked about it in 2009 at the authorities. The daily newspaper WirtschaftsBlatt reported in September 2009 that Meischberger and Hochegger then wanted to save what could be saved by voluntarily reporting to Finanz. In July 2016, the public prosecutor's office for business and corruption brought charges against Grasser & Co. At the beginning of the process, Hochegger made a partial confession and thus incriminated the co-defendants Grasser, Meischberger and real estate agent Ernst Plech.
They are said to have divided their share of the commission (7.2 million euros) into a third each and stashed it in accounts in Liechtenstein. The trio denies that. The money and the accounts should belong to Meischberger.
According to judge Marion Hohenecker, Grasser is said to have given the decisive tip about the bid made by CA Immo for the privatization of Buwog Meischberger. Based on this inside information, the Austrian consortium for Immofinanz is said to have been awarded the contract. Grasser & Co. deny the allegations. Walter Meischberger claims to have received the decisive tip from the former Governor of Carinthia, Haider.
The backgrounds of the Ibiza video are revealed
It was a good seven hours in July 2017 that shook the republic. The meeting of the later Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPÖ top politician Johann Gudenus with a detective and an alleged oligarch brought down the turquoise-blue government.
It was not until this year that numerous new backgrounds were uncovered, primarily through the KURIER.
So it became clear that the focus of the meeting in the finca was on buying the Kronenzeitung – contrary to the previous assurances of the two ex-FPÖ politicians. But on the other hand, the material revealed that no deal actually came about and Strache had not promised any immediate consideration.
It is also clear that the content of the video does not contain any other major scandals. As the KURIER reported, the material was hidden on an SD card in the socket of an apartment of a Lower Austrian firefighter and a porn actress. The SOKO investigators found the most important video in the country in a moldy substandard apartment, of all places.
The KURIER also revealed that Gudenus had much closer points of contact with the Ibiza detective Julian H. than previously known. The two were even on a flight to Russia together, the detective had made further tape recordings. There was also another video that Gudenus showed while consuming cocaine in a Vienna hotel.
Just over two weeks ago, Julian H. was arrested in the apartment of a Berlin journalist after months of fleeing. The reason for this is not so much the video, he is also accused of trafficking in cocaine in the kilogram range. His lawyer has already announced that H. will apply for asylum in Germany if he is extradited. Parliament's Ibiza-U Committee is also meeting and revealing how posts have been distributed behind the scenes in the turquoise-blue government.
Wirecard: 1.9 billion euros, which probably never existed
It was the first time in history that a DAX company slipped into bankruptcy. In June, Wirecard had to admit that the group is missing 1.9 billion euros, which should actually be parked in banks in the Philippines. But the money never existed there.
There are many indications that those responsible have worked with international intelligence services.
The day before his escape, Wirecard manager Jan Marsalek, an Austrian, met a former high-ranking agent of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Vienna. The BVT man plays a role in several cases.
In any case, there is still no trace of Jan Marsalek. But everything indicates that he went into hiding in Russia. KURIER research revealed that he flew there from Bad Vöslau in a private plane. Then his track is lost. Otherwise, the processing of the entire scandal is only in progress.
A U-Committee was set up in the German Bundestag in October. There were also suspicions that Marsalek might have set up a mercenary army in Libya for Russia. In any case, Wirecard was an international payment service provider that processed cashless payments for 280,000 companies. Work was also carried out on a payment system for asylum seekers together with the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna.
In the end, the company employed more than 5,000 people. The company, whose roots were in payment systems for the porn industry, disappeared as quickly as it appeared.
What is certain is that there were numerous warnings and that control mechanisms failed. The investigation is currently underway because of allegations of gang fraud and market manipulation.
Ex-Wirecard boss Markus Braun, also an Austrian, is therefore in custody in Germany. He denies all allegations.
The castle in the air at Mattersburg: 690 million euros damage
Falsified balance sheets, bogus loans and invented assets worth millions: The scandal surrounding the insolvent Commerzialbank Mattersburg has deeply shaken the Austrian banking landscape. For more than 20 years, the bankers Martin Pucher and Franziska Klikovits are said to have carried out large-scale malversations until the collapse and closure of the regional bank on July 15, 2020.
In doing so, they are said to have duped the Financial Market Authority FMA, the TPA auditor and the Oesterreichische Nationalbank auditors. Even criminal complaints from bank insiders went nowhere because the responsible public prosecutor simply stopped their investigations. Martin Pucher turned the big wheel. The bottom line is that the damage should amount to at least 690 million euros.
According to Pucher, the bank was bankrupt in 2000. On paper, the Commerzialbank had balances of up to 60 million euros with eleven banks, but the bank confirmations for this were skillfully forged year after year.
At the same time, fake credits were given to well-known people from the phone book. The borrowers affected knew nothing about their financial commitment. Most of the loan money flowed back to the bank as liquidity. Only in this way could the trickery be maintained. Banker Pucher also took other people's money in hand to help financially troubled companies that otherwise could not service their loans.
The Commerzialbank and Pucher were also heavily involved in the SV Mattersburg football club. The club was Pucher's second castle in the air. “As far as Mr. Martin Pucher can still remember today, from around 2003, around the promotion of SV Mattersburg to the top division, sponsorship contracts between SV Mattersburg and various companies based in Burgenland were made in order to the basis of which is to be able to make payments to the account of SV Mattersburg at Commerzialbank AG ”, it says in the investigation file.
“The companies or persons named as sponsors in the contracts had no knowledge of the payments or the contracts.”
