How the Swiss publishing house TX Group ended up in Austria’s corruption swamp

With how much corruption and criminal counter-trading with powerful media entrepreneurs did Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) manage to secure his way to the chancellery? Austria is again concerned with this question.

The reason for the latest affair: a house search on behalf of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) last Thursday in the center of Vienna. About 25 agents have secured data and documents in the offices of AHHV GmbH – the publisher of the free newspaper “Heute”.

Switzerland’s largest publishing house, the Zurich-based TX Group (formerly Tamedia), holds a 25.5 percent stake in AHHV GmbH through an investment company. The digital activities of the publishing group “Heute”, including Austria’s most comprehensive news portal “heute.at”, are bundled in DJ Digitale Medien GmbH. Here the TX Group is even the majority shareholder with 51 percent.

The prosecutor is investigating bribery and breach of trust against Eva Dichand, the publisher of “Today”, majority shareholder and co-director of AHHV GmbH, as well as co-director and co-owner Wolfgang Jansky. Ex-Chancellor Kurz and Eva Dichand’s husband, Christoph Dichand, are also targets of the investigation. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of the “Kronen Zeitung”, the newspaper with the highest circulation in Austria. The presumption of innocence applies to all of them.

“Bussi Thomas”: Proximity between publisher and brief intimacy

The WKStA’s corruption hunters are investigating the suspicion of a “criminally relevant agreement” between “officials of the Republic of Austria” and the Dichand couple. The investigation aims to clarify whether such an agreement existed and whether or not charges have been filed.

The central figure on the government’s side is Thomas Schmid, for many years head of cabinet at the Federal Ministry of Finance and close confidant of ex-chancellor Kurz. Schmid is the key figure in numerous corruption scandals from the time of the government coalition between the conservative ÖVP and the right-wing populist FPÖ (2017-2019).

Justice has been evaluating more than 300,000 messages from Schmid’s mobile phone for three and a half years. They show a shocking moral picture of Kurz’s reign and his rise from young foreign minister to ÖVP party leader and federal chancellor. Fake polls, abuse of taxpayers’ money, bargaining at work: it seems that Kurz and his entourage were willing to do anything to gain and secure power.

Messages between Schmid and publisher Eva Dichand indicate a friendly relationship. Dichand offered Schmid her apartment in Paris for the night. Schmid ended a message to Dichand with the words “Bussi Thomas”.

In October 2022, it became known that Schmid was cooperating with justice and testifying extensively. He would like to receive leniency status, which would give him a reduced sentence in the proceedings against him.

The editors defend themselves against allegations

In the most recent investigations, the Public Prosecution Service for Economic Affairs and Corruption outlines the following criminally relevant exchange transaction. The Federal Ministry of Finance placed generous advertisements in the newspapers “Heute” and “Krone”. In addition, it would have campaigned for a reform of private law on foundations that would please the very wealthy Dichand couple (estimated assets: more than 600 million euros).

In exchange for advertising money and political support, the Dichand couple are said to have acquired “journalistic goodwill” by reporting on Sebastian Kurz and the ÖVP in the newspapers “Heute” and “Krone”. This is in a WKStA document. In addition, the Dichands would have allowed Kurz and his associates to “put” important topics in the editorial section of the two magazines and “continue to report as few critical voices as possible.”

The publishers and editors of “Heute” and “heute.at” already described the allegations as false last week. The editors “strongly reject the accusation of complacent reporting”.

At the request of CH Media, the TX Group writes that “Today” and the owner are interested in full cooperation with the investigative authorities and a quick clarification of the facts. The TX Group has “as of today no evidence corroborating the allegations made”. Editorial independence and the quality of your media are very important to you. The TX Group does not disclose whether the relationship of trust with Eva Dichand has been broken. (aargauerzeitung.ch)