With Wolfgang Peschorn as the first person to provide information, the committee of inquiry into Cofag aid payments during the pandemic was launched on Wednesday. It is the first U-Committee to meet in the Erwin Schrödinger Hall of the renovated parliament.
Another novelty was a screen intended to shield MPs from journalists: a form of harassment that sparked protests among media representatives. National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka (VP) was represented in the chair by party friend Friedrich Ofenauer right at the premiere.
“Taxpayers’ Advocate”
Peschorn, the head of the financial prosecutor’s office, sometimes referred to as the “taxpayer’s lawyer”, was questioned for four hours about his perceptions of the insolvencies of Rene Benko’s Signa companies.
“Signa is a living lack of transparency,” said Peschorn about Benko’s real estate conglomerate, whom he sometimes referred to as “the gentleman from Tyrol.” If Signa had presented consolidated balance sheets, the dilemma would have become apparent earlier, says Peschorn, who is now a member of the creditors’ committee.
Peschorn was unaware of the central assumption made by the U-Committee set up by the SPÖ and FPÖ, according to which there had been “excess funding” for Benko from the VP-led Finance Ministry (“We were not involved”).
Green parliamentary group leader Nina Tomaselli shed some light on Benko’s income world. She presented his tax return for 2019, which showed a fee of 25.9 million euros. “Not bad for someone who claims he has no operational role at Signa,” commented Tomaselli. Benko claimed expenses for things like his private jet and the Schlosshotel Igls. He had no insight into the tax file, but the fact that there would be an additional tax demand was “positive from the Republic’s perspective,” said Peschorn. After him it was the turn of a retired section head from the Ministry of Finance. Among other things, she was involved in the tax case of the investor Siegfried Wolf, which involved possible interventions with ex-Finance Secretary General Thomas Schmid.
Accordingly, representatives from Wolf approached the ministry several times with a request for tax relief. The specialist department checked this, rejected it and reported it to the responsible tax office. During a business audit in 2019, it was found that the leniency was nevertheless granted by the tax office. According to the former auditor, she reported this without informing Eduard Müller, who was finance minister in the interim government at the time. Afterwards, Müller “became very loud and asked me whether we had all become stupid.”
In return, Wolf is said to have intervened with Schmid on behalf of the head of that tax office, a golfing friend, about a transfer. She understood Schmid’s request for personnel “more as information,” but the ex-officer did not want to “perceive any intervention.” The U-Committee continues today.
Braunau tax office case
The Cofag committee also addressed the issue according to which VP club chairman August Wöginger, as a deputy, is said to have successfully intervened with ex-Finance Secretary General Thomas Schmid for the appointment of a VP mayor to the board of the Braunau tax office. In the U-Committee, questions about this were not permitted to the invited ex-section head. The officer testified before the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) in April 2022. According to the minutes, she was informed by the board of large business auditing at a meeting in 2017 that the VP mayor should become head of the tax office.
Wöginger himself was not mentioned by name. Schmid had accused the VP club boss before the WKStA.
Author
Lucian Mayringer
Internal politics editor
Lucian Mayringer
