Austria's got a Russia scandal...

[hollodero]

(05-20-2019, 11:45 AM)michaelsean Wrote: It's a little confusing for me.  She offered to buy half of the newspaper and switch its content to favor his party?  Is that the help with elections?

Besides other things, yes. To understand the significance of that one would need to know how powerful said newspaper is - I guess they hold the world record regarding circulation within a certain nation. Having influence there is a huge power factor in that sad pathetic country of mine. So they talked about that quite bluntly, that afterwards some critical journalists had to be thrashed and whatnot. Then they even implied privatizing our national public TV channel and expose it to the Russian lady's influence... which, well, doesn't play too well with folks either. He openly named Hungary and Victor Orban's way to handle the media (having it bought and hence preventing critical journalism) as a role model, which also is quite scrutinizing.

Lady also offered donations to the party, which is a bit trickier here than one from the US would probably assume. That kind of thing is strictly regulated and surveilled, and the implication that a donation could circumvent that is a big deal - especially since our fallen guy implied that's what other secret donors (he named names) are already doing. This probably will lead to a criminal investigation.

As service in return for her investments (she implied quite heftily it might be illegal money), fake lady was offered to get public contracts after the election. They even talked privatizing the rights for our water, which is a huge no-no in this country. You do not sell our water, which we consider a valuable national ressource for the future (which isn't unreasonable).

More and more bizarre details see the day of light within the hour, but I guess they would bore you even more. So be warned, further questions might lead to extensive answers :)