Austria: Kurz rejects corruption allegations, plans to remain in office

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Austrian Chancellor Kurz saw no reason to resign over the ongoing corruption investigations, as became clear in a press statement in Vienna on Friday evening.

Kurz stressed that he and his party are ‘able to act and, above all, willing to act’, despite the ongoing governmental crisis.

Kurz invoked the legal presumption of innocence and asserted that the allegations against him are ‘simply wrong’.

“The good thing about our constitutional state is that not only is there an opportunity to raise an allegation against anyone, but everyone also has the opportunity to prove that these allegations are false,” he said in his statement.

The public prosecutor’s office is investigating Kurz and some of his closest confidants on suspicion of corruption. He and his team are accused of having used tax funds to secure Kurz’s political rise to the top in the OVP as well as the state since 2016.

SOUNDBITES:

SOT, Sebastian Kurz, Austrian chancellor (German): “We have all noticed that there is understandably a lot of irritation and therefore uncertainty at the moment. And there is currently a lot of things being mixed up that I would like to separate and where I think that it is also important to separate these things. On the one hand, there are text messages, some years ago, most of them not from me, but also some from me, which I sometimes formulated emotionally or in the heat of the battle in a way that I would not formulate it again today.”

SOT, Sebastian Kurz, Austrian chancellor (German): “And on the other hand, there are criminal charges against my person, which are simply wrong. And the good thing about our constitutional state is that not only is there an opportunity to raise an allegation against anyone, but everyone also has the opportunity to prove that these allegations are false. The federal president said today that the presumption of innocence applies to everyone and I think it is important that politicians in our country should not be treated better than a regular citizen, but in my opinion, they should not be treated worse either.”

SOT, Sebastian Kurz, Austrian chancellor (German): “Ladies and gentlemen, in addition to the question of the allegations from 2016, the main question now is what will happen next with the government and what will happen in the republic of Austria. As head of government and as chairman of the people’s party, I discussed with the OVP members of the government today and we have agreed that, as convinced democrats, we will of course accept when there are other majorities in parliament, but at the same time we would like to state that we are as a team of the people’s party in the government able to act and, above all, willing to act. And I think we have proven that in the last year and a half in our cooperation with our coalition partner when I think of the fight against the pandemic, when I think of the economic and labour market measures, and also when I think that we have only recently initiated an eco-social tax reform.”

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