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Far-right ministers ready to quit Austria govt after scandal

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VIENNA: Austria’s two ruling parties descended into squabbling on Monday over how to muddle through until an early election after a video sting felled the leader of the far right and raised questions about whether its democracy had been corrupted.


Conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called off his coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) on Saturday after its longtime leader Heinz-Christian Strache was caught in the apparent sting operation offering to fix state contracts for a woman posing as a Russian oligarch’s niece.


German media published the video on Friday, a week before a European Parliament election and a year and a half after Austria once again became the only Western European country with far-right cabinet ministers. It has since been joined by Italy.


The video showed Strache meeting the woman in 2017, shortly before the election that brought him into government. So far, nothing has come to light suggesting how or why the two news outlets came to publish it now.


In the footage, Strache discussed rules on party financing and how to work around them. Describing the footage as “targeted political assassination”, he said he has done nothing illegal and never met the woman again.


With a snap election now expected in September,


attention turned to what to do until then.  — Reuters


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