Austria’s government castigated for failure to tackle corruption

Austria’s government has “persistently” failed to tackle corruption among lawmakers and the judiciary, according to a damning anti-graft report from the Council of Europe.

The finding comes just two weeks after police raided the home of Austrian finance minister Gernot Blümel in a sprawling corruption probe that has become a serious challenge for the government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Blümel has denied any wrongdoing.

Kurz has offered to personally testify to prosecutors, who are investigating connections between politicians and Austria’s Novomatic, one of the largest gambling companies in the world.

The Council of Europe’s Group of States Against Corruption (Greco) — a body comprising 49 COE members as well as the US — castigated Austria on Monday for “globally unsatisfactory” progress in tackling corruption.

Greco said that over the four years since it last performed a full assessment of member states, Austrian authorities had moved to tackle just two of 19 urgent recommendations for reform.

The Greco report puts Austria just ahead of Serbia and the Czech Republic, and below Turkey, in terms of its implementation of the council’s anti-corruption standards to a “fully satisfactory” standard. There had been a “persistent lack of progress”, Greco said, in particular with regard to abuses of office by parliamentarians.

Kurz’s first government, a coalition with the far-right Freedom party, collapsed in May 2019 amid a corruption scandal when vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was filmed in Ibiza soliciting support from a Russian oligarch in return for political favours. He later resigned.

The current probe by Austrian prosecutors into Novomatic has already entangled dozens of suspects from senior positions in politics and Austrian officialdom.

As well as the current finance minister, former finance minister Hartwig Löger and the head of the country’s state holding company, Thomas Schmid, have also been named by prosecutors as suspects. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Kurz has moved swiftly to try to stem the fallout from the scandal. He has vociferously defended his finance minister and accused prosecutors of politicising the judicial process.

Last week, the chancellor proposed to scrap the country’s existing agency for tackling white-collar crime and corruption, the WKStA, and replace it with a new independent office of a Federal Prosecutor.

Kurz warned in a letter of complaint to the WKStA that its allegations against serving ministers had led to “reputational damage, especially abroad, for the Federal Government and thus for the entire Republic of Austria”.

The move to create a new Federal Prosecutor’s office will require a constitutional amendment but is likely to be supported by opposition parties, which have long campaigned for it.

Kurz’s own conservative People’s party has, until now, been the biggest obstacle to reform attempts of Austria’s judicial system.

A spokesperson for Kurz declined to comment. The Austrian ministry of justice did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment on the Greco report.