A story follows with some surprising twists. A turn like they all have stories that concern the overturned financial group Wirecard and domestic politics.
The relationship between Austrian parties, authorities and the German payment provider with former Vienna management should be investigated on Tuesday evening in the National Security Council.
The committee convened the ÖVP two weeks ago, accompanied by a press conference by its Vice Secretary-General Gaby Schwarz.
There, Schwarz made serious accusations to the FPÖ because the fleeting Wirecard CFO Jan Marsalek apparently forwarded information from the protection of the constitution to the blue club chairman Johann Gudenus.
When that was to be discussed on Tuesday, however, Schwarz did not appear - just as little as the turquoise security spokesman Karl Mahrer, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP).
The latter was ill at short notice, which the deputies only found out at the Security Council, but was informed of the office of the National Security Council in the afternoon. The opposition therefore did not recognize the meeting and moved out; overall, some representatives from the ranks of the opposition were also missing.
App for basic care
As a result, some subject areas were not addressed.
For example, the rumor that a refuge app with Wirecard had been planned in the then blue Ministry of the Interior under Herbert Kickl. Asylum seekers should receive their basic care through it, so the "Refugee Card" should work like a kind of ATM card.
The aim was on the one hand to avoid difficulties in opening a bank account,
but on the other hand to prevent transfers to the country of origin. Apparently
the ÖVP inclined officials in the Ministry of the Interior had remembered this episode again, turquoise wanted to address them on Tuesday.
The Ministry of the Interior, now headed by Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), officially confirmed that the then Kickl Ministry had held talks about a refugee app until February 2019. At the Kickls office, who is now a freelance club chairman, one was initially surprised, but was then able to reconstruct the discussions.
And lo and behold: The recommendation to hold discussions with Wirecard partner Ebcon via a refugee app came from the turquoise chancellery to the Kickl ministry.
A cabinet employee from the then Chancellor's Minister Gernot Blümel forwarded the contact and also checked the Ministry of the Interior when an appointment was made.
The Bavarian Ebcon also proudly advertises on its website that it organized "expert hearings" for its refugee app in the Federal Chancellery and later in the Ministry of the Interior. This is said to be already in use in some counties in Bavaria.
The Chancellery says that the employee forwarded the Ebcon contact to the responsible body, namely the Ministry of the Interior.
Further appointments to the Chancellery were rejected.
Formally, no connection can be found between this project and the advances of the volatile chief of finance Marsalek.
The latter was in the Ministry of the Interior to promote his border protection
project in Libya - there he apparently wanted to
control the flow of refugees with private mercenaries. Axis to Russia Marsalek is said to have had close ties to Russian intelligence. According to the "Financial Times", he bragged to London brokers about secret documents relating to the
Novichok nerve agent.
The evidence that Marsalek also had good sources in the domestic protection of the constitution has been ringing the alarm bells in the Interior Ministry for weeks. Marsalek is said to have received confidential documents on Nowitschok from Austria, reports the daily "Austria". It relies on an advertisement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Defense and the Ministry of Economy.
The documents leaked to Marsalek would be available to all three ministries, including the formula for Novichok, a neurotoxin that was still being developed in the Soviet Union.
Such connections are explosive in relation to the Refugee app.
It is suspected that Marsalek would have obtained data from asylum seekers via the project.
Russia, for example, has a particular interest in refugees from Chechnya. An analysis of flight movements suggests that Marsalek is currently hiding in Russia.
Local authorities have been using Wirecard technology for a long time. The ex-company director Markus Braun, who was now arrested again, was born in Austria and was well connected in Vienna. For example, he was sitting in Think Austria, the turquoise think tank of the Federal Chancellery.
Whether Braun from the shady machinations of his CFO Marsalek - likewise
an Austrian who knew about it is currently under investigation, the presumption
of innocence applies.
Wirecard was considered a German hope for the future in the tech industry for
years, although there was always evidence of painting verse. The bubble burst in
the spring: auditors discovered that the company had falsified the balance sheet
on a large scale. Since then, German investigators have ordered arrests and
numerous raids. The affair quickly reached Austria; not least thanks to Whatsapp
chats on the smartphone from Johann Gudenus, who obviously knew Marsalek.
Gudenus does not want to have known anything about the refugee app
