The complaint was filed in connection with the accusation of violating the payment obligation following cancellations in the Corona year 2020. The facts reported by “art but fair UNITED” were serious fraud through deception, coercion and dangerous threats, as well as “infidelity in connection with the improper use of sponsorship money for the shortened version of the Salzburg Festival 2020 due to corona,” according to the professional association. The complaint was submitted to the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) in Vienna in December 2023 and ended up with the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office in January 2024. There it was checked whether there was an initial suspicion.
The Salzburg Festival finally stated in a broadcast on Tuesday that the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office did not even recognize initial suspicion in the criminal complaint filed and therefore did not initiate an investigation. “It confirms that the serious allegations made by Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke and his club have no basis whatsoever,” said a media release. In response to an APA request, the spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office, Elena Haslinger, confirmed on Tuesday: “We have refrained from initiating an investigation due to a lack of initial suspicion.”
Ablinger-Sperrhacke: “Musterklage”
As the Salzburg Festival explained in the broadcast, in the midst of the corona pandemic in the summer of 2020, the directorate was the only festival to provide employment to over 1,400 employees, including around 900 artists, during periods of unemployment, at great personal risk. “The prevention concept developed by the Salzburg Festival became the basis worldwide for enabling cultural events during the pandemic.”
Civil law proceedings are also pending in the Vienna Labor and Social Court (ASG). “art but fair UNITED”, whose spokesman is the Kammersänger Ablinger-Sperrhacke, sees the case as a model lawsuit in which allegedly inadmissible employment relationships in the choir sector and decades of non-payment and insurance during the pre-rehearsal period for the additional members of the Vienna State Opera Choir concert association are to be clarified in court .
