The general assembly of the Creative, Cultural and Event Holding (KKV) decided to dismiss him on Tuesday followingnoon, announced Mayor Klaus Luger (SPÖ). In doing so, it followed the unanimous recommendation of the LIVA Supervisory Board, which had met earlier.
The topics of the three-hour extraordinary supervisory board meeting were the results of the special audit of LIVA by the control committee and the results of the compliance audit by KPMG auditors. The latter had revealed the already known “further, serious misconduct” by Kerschbaum. These concern self-dealing, secondary activities and secondary employment, business trips, expenses, awarding processes and “management behavior that completely contradicts the compliance guidelines,” said Luger. The recommendation was therefore made to KKV to immediately part ways with Kerschbaum, whose contract runs until the end of 2027. Whether criminal proceedings would also be taken was still open for the time being. Based on the new findings, the control office had advised that individual facts be forwarded to the public prosecutor’s office for examination.
TV analysis with OÖN culture director Peter Grubmüller:
Allegations once morest City Councillor for Culture
The meeting caused a stir because a member of the supervisory board, City Councillor for Culture Doris Lang-Mayrhofer (ÖVP), had apparently received orders from the artistic director in violation of compliance rules. “That surprised me very much,” said the mayor, who is also chairman of the supervisory board, adding: “But the facts are clear.” This is likely to involve the foyer of the Brucknerhaus, which was redesigned in 2019. As the “Kronen Zeitung” reported online, the Maylan company took over part of the renovation. Lang-Mayerhofer holds 50 percent of the company as a shareholder, and her husband holds the other half, the report quotes from the KPMG report. Due to the size of the contract, allegedly 67,000 euros, approval from the LIVA supervisory board, of which the city councillor is deputy chairwoman, was never obtained.
Image: City of Linz
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Image: City of Linz
“I am shocked that attempts are now being made once morest me to distract from the actual Brucknerhaus scandal with baseless accusations,” she rejected these allegations. “As a city councilor, I am clearly prohibited from practicing my profession. I am involved in my husband’s company, which he also runs operationally. The new building of the cash desk was planned in 2019 by the Linz architectural firm responsible at the time.” Maylan was selected as the best bidder. “I assumed that the two board directors always complied with the formal reporting obligations. Correct procedure was always important to me – which is also confirmed in the KPMG compliance report,” she said in writing.
In March, shortly before the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Brucknerhaus, allegations once morest Kerschbaum became public, which led to his dismissal – and that of the commercial director Rainer Stadler – by the LIVA supervisory board. Kerschbaum is said to have concluded questionable self-dealings and to have outsourced the programming to an agent who himself looked following potential artists for the concert hall.