Strabag–Tisza Financing Scandal: Introducing the Powerful Austrian Liberal Industrial Magnate

Barely a day passed after a post was published on Facebook by Construction and Transport Minister Janos Lazar, describing how the Austrian construction company Strabag financially and through opinion polls supports the Tisza Party, and the issue exploded in Austria. The Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) has initiated a parliamentary investigation and called on the leader of the NEOS party, the liberal coalition partner, to immediately clarify whether she had prior knowledge of the matter and whether Austria's Foreign Ministry, which she leads, is involved in any way. The controversy, however, is not new. Strabag and its liberal-leaning owner have a long history of political influence-building in Hungary, dating back to the early 2000s. Magyar Nemzet now presents a two-part series examining the Austrian company’s political involvement and its connections to the former Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) party financing scandal.

Hans Peter Haselsteiner, a key player in the Strabag scandal (Source: YouTube)

By 2013, Haselsteiner was financially backing the NEOS electoral alliance, which successfully entered parliament. In January 2014, NEOS and the Liberal Forum merged to form NEOS – The New Austria and Liberal Forum. It is this party’s current leader, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, whom the FPO has now called upon to explain the alleged financing of the Tisza Party. All this clearly shows that Haselsteiner has long practiced the art of political influence, a tool he has often translated into major public contracts worth billions.

An example of this was the scandal in the mid-2000s sparked by reports in both the Austrian and Hungarian press claiming that Strabag donated tens of millions of forints to the liberal SZDSZ, the smaller coalition partner in Hungary’s then-government.

It was no coincidence that in October 2006, at a demonstration on Budapest’s Kossuth Square, Laszlo Kover, then chairman of the opposition Fidesz party’s national board, referred to the SZDSZ as the "Alliance of Strabag Democrats."

At the time, Hungarian public life was dominated by the leaked Oszod speech of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, and the resulting political firestorm. Against that backdrop, the Strabag–SZDSZ affair seemed a smaller scandal although, as we will show in the next part of this series, it continued to surface in the media for years afterward.

To be continued.

               

       

       
       

            További játékainkhoz kattintson ide!