2023-04-20 23:16:41
A security adviser sat on the stage, and the number of securities in front of and in the room was unusually high. The approximately 80 people who came to the sold-out Rote Bar of the Wiener Volkstheater on Thursday might well feel like the most protected theater audience in Vienna that evening. The reason for this was the first public appearance by Julian Hessenthaler, whose “Ibiza video” with Heinz-Christian Strache and Johann Gudenus shook the republic.
At the start of the slightly more than one and a half hour evening, which is said to have been watched by more than 1,000 viewers via stream, journalism professor Fritz Hausjell, in his function as President of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), thanked Austria Hessenthaler for his initiative, with which he combination of courage and intellect” saved Austria from bad luck. However, he warned that one should not have high hopes that Austria will improve in the next press freedom ranking, which will be published on May 3: “Things have gotten worse.” Quite similarly Hessenthaler himself: “We are not as far removed from the Orban system as we would like!”
The “Ibiza detective”, who described his job not as a detective but as a security consultant, spoke to the journalist Jean Peters from the donation-financed research center “Correctiv” and also answered questions from the audience. It was also regarding the background and circumstances of the video shot in 2017, which showed the then FPÖ boss and vice chancellor and the then FPÖ club chairman in a villa on Ibiza in conversation with a supposed oligarch niece and subsequently led to resignations and new elections . “When I saw the video, I was disappointed,” said Hessenthaler, because those compromising and punishable statements that had been made several times over the course of the evening, which lasted several hours, would not have been on the video. “Talking stupid is not punishable,” his lawyer would have judged the material. “In the end we didn’t make it as planned.”
But the planning was by no means as professional as was often rumored. A lot was improvised. He regretted that the planning phase was not also recorded on video. “I think that would have been the better video.” This statement caused one of the sparse laughs of the evening, as did Peters’ reference that there were small warning signs on the finca with “Caution Video!” due to the surveillance cameras anyway. appropriate, so the guests might have assumed that they were being filmed. Hessenthaler was once once more convinced that the video was made legally – not least because Spanish law allows it. “I highly doubt that a trial once morest me would have resulted in a guilty verdict.”
Hessenthaler was also not convicted because of the “Ibiza video”, but because of cocaine trafficking and because of accepting, passing on or possessing false or forged specially protected documents and forgery of documents – which prompted the Viennese FPÖ club chairman Maximilian Krauss two days ago to protest once morest the appearance of the “convicted criminal Hessenthaler” to lodge a protest. The arrest in December 2020 in Berlin, the pre-trial detention and the trial in St. Pölten in March 2022, in which Hessenthaler was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, formed the second theme of the evening.
Hessenthaler, who has been free since March with ankle shackles and, according to “Correctiv”, was released early on April 7th, has repeatedly denied the crimes he is accused of and also argued that evening that there was no material evidence and only give highly dubious witness statements once morest him. He said he mightn’t say who he believed to be behind this jail scheme because he was on parole and had to avoid making statements that might be construed as libel or defamation. On the other hand, he severely criticized the fact that there was no second instance in Austria that would carry out a renewed evaluation and review of the evidence of a lay judge’s judgment and that the Supreme Court had only reviewed the formalities in its dismissed appeal for nullity. His already cynical attitude towards the Austrian judiciary has been reinforced by his personal experiences: “The Austrian investigative authorities act in a way that in reality scratches the rule of law.”
Hessenthaler received long applause from the audience and was honored for his achievements in Austrian political hygiene. “I paid dearly for what they call this performance,” he replied. Acquaintances and friends who he involved also said so, without considering the consequences this might have for them. “It’s something that weighs on my conscience.” However, he will not let this deter him from speaking out in the future.
The next opportunities will present themselves very soon. On May 4th, an evening with the “Clean Hands” initiative will take place in the Red Bar. The scheduled discussion will deal with the consequences of the Ibiza video, but also with the question of what happened to the anti-corruption referendum initiated last year. Finally, on May 17, Hessenthaler will discuss the history of the video and the consequences with representatives from politics, the media and the judiciary under the motto “The Ibiza Anniversary – A Look Across the Borders”.
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