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POLITICS

Vienna vote: Far-right support crumbles in local election

Support for the far-right evaporated in municipal elections in Vienna on Sunday, spelling humiliation for former Austrian chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache who was attempting a comeback after a corruption scandal last year.

Vienna vote: Far-right support crumbles in local election
Former Austrian Vice-Chancellor and leader of his "Team HC Strache" Alliance for Austria party, Heinz-Christian Strache. AFP

Partial results on Sunday evening showed Strache's new party secured just 3.6 percent of the vote, short of the five-percent hurdle to sit on the city council, while the centre-left defended its historic hold on the mayor's office.

Support for Strache's former party, FPOe, plunged 23.3 points compared with 2015, receiving just 7.7 percent of votes, according to a partial count compiled by the SORA polling agency.

The FPOe was kicked out of the federal government last year after the publication of hidden-camera footage showing then-leader Strache discussing shady backroom deals with a woman claiming to be a wealthy Russian.

In the recording, he said the far-right party receives hundreds of thousands of euros in illicit funding and proposed a plot for her to buy Austria's largest newspaper and turn it into an FPOe mouthpiece in exchange for lucrative public contracts.

Known as “Ibiza-gate” for the film's recording on the Spanish party island, the scandal left the FPOe internally divided and slashed its support at subsequent parliamentary elections to 16 percent.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz formed a new coalition government with the Greens, while Strache is under investigation for allegedly spending hundreds of thousands of euros of party funds on private expenses from Chanel handbags 
and private jet flights to dog food.

Some commentators had previously seen Kurz's attempt to tame the extremes by allying with them as a potential blueprint for European centre-right parties, confronted with a massively strengthened far-right in the wake of the 
2015 migrant crisis.

Known as “Red Vienna” for its decades of left-wing rule, the capital on Sunday handed incumbent social-democratic mayor Michael Ludwig 42.1 percent of the vote, adding 2.5 points and leaving coalition options open with the 
Greens, conservatives or liberals.

Ludwig has already ruled out working with the FPOe.

Vienna is Austria's capital and one of the country's nine federal states. Sunday's election saw voters pick their city council and the mayors of the city's 23 districts.

Final results will be published on Monday.

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POLITICS

Austrian in Russia spying probe freed from detention

An Austrian court on Wednesday ordered a former intelligence officer suspected of spying for Russia released from detention, as investigators continue probing the case.

Austrian in Russia spying probe freed from detention

Egisto Ott — a former agent of the now-defunct Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT) — was arrested in late March.

He was accused of “systematically” providing information to the Russian secret services, allegations that have shaken the nation.

The Vienna high court ordered Ott’s release, saying in a statement that there was no risk of him committing crimes once he was released. However, it added that he remained under investigation for suspected crimes.

Ott was suspended from his post in 2017 amid spying allegations and briefly arrested in 2021 on these same accusations.

He was detained in March after London said his name had come up in written messages exchanged between a suspected spy arrested in Britain and Jan Marsalek.

READ ALSO: Austrian ex-minister exiled in Russia denies she is ‘Kremlin agent’

Marsalek, the Austrian former chief operating officer of payments firm Wirecard, fled Germany in 2020—reportedly to Russia—over fraud allegations following the company’s spectacular collapse.

Based on the seized messages, Ott was accused of passing the smartphone data of three senior officials to Russia in exchange for payment.

According to the arrest warrant obtained by AFP, he is also accused of having supplied a laptop containing confidential documents.

Spying on Russia critics

Suspected of having helped Marsalek, Ott is accused, too, of having spied on Russia critics.

They included Christo Grozev, a journalist with the Bellingcat investigative website who was investigating Moscow’s spy networks. He left Vienna after his apartment was broken into.

Contacted by AFP before his most recent arrest, Ott denied any accusation of spying for Russia.

Since his arrest, information from the prosecution has leaked, according to which moles close to the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) are still operating in Vienna.

READ ALSO: Austria’s spy arrest puts Cold War spotlight back on Vienna

The FPOe used to have a “cooperation pact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party.

It governed Austria as a junior partner in a coalition government from 2017 to 2019, and polls suggest it could win the national elections in September.

The authorities raided the country’s intelligence service during the current FPOe leader Herbert Kickl’s tenure as interior minister in 2018, seriously damaging its reputation.

After Ott’s arrest, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer called for heightened security in the country.

The EU country of nine million has traditionally seen itself as a bridge between the East and West, but in recent years, has been rocked by several cases centred on suspected spying for Moscow.

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