VIENNA (Reuters) – Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz expects to be charged but eventually cleared in an investigation into whether he gave false testimony to a parliamentary commission, he told Sunday newspapers, ruling out the idea of resigning if indicted.
The investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors, made public, last week poses a stiff political challenge for the conservative Kurz, 34, who governs in coalition with the Greens.
Kurz has painted himself as the victim of opposition parties trying to trap him into saying something that could be construed as perjury before the commission, which is looking into possible corruption under his previous coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) which collapsed in 2019.
“After every word of mine on 58 pages (of testimony) is put on the scale, I certainly expect a criminal complaint, that’s right,” he told the Krone newspaper in an interview, adding he had not yet been questioned by prosecutors.
But he said he was confident he would be exonerated in the case, which centres on whether he answered truthfully when asked about appointments to state holding company OBAG.
“I have spoken to numerous lawyers and several university professors. The tenor was always the same: no one can imagine that there will be a conviction here,” he told the paper.
In a separate interview with the Oesterreich paper, he rejected the idea of stepping down if indicted.
“I definitely rule that out. Like many people, I have made many mistakes, both privately and professionally. But what I definitely know is that I went into the commission with the intention of answering the questions truthfully,” he said.
An opinion poll published by Oesterreich showed Kurz’s conservatives winning 35% support should parliamentary elections be held now, down 1 point from a week earlier and 2.5 points from its showing in 2019 elections.
Its Greens partners were on 12%, in fourth place behind the Social Democrats on 22% and the FPO at 17%.
The commission has looked into the appointment in 2019 of a conservative loyalist as chief executive of OBAG, which manages Austria’s stakes in companies including oil firm OMV. Text messages examined by the commission showed Kurz telling the candidate before then he would get “everything you want”.
The investigation is looking at whether Kurz discussed the appointment with the candidate beforehand and whether the chancellor was involved in selecting members of OBAG’s supervisory board, both of which Kurz denied at the commission.
(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Pravin Char)
