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The protagonist of the Ibiza video, Austria’s ex-Vice Chancellor Strache, is making headlines again. A video shows him in a sort of brawl in a Viennese disco.
Vienna – Unnoticed videos from a “b’soffnen G’schicht”: The former Austrian FPÖ Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has already had experience with this since the Ibiza video – which he himself described as such a “G’schicht”. . The stage on which Strache performed last weekend was the Vienna club “Volksgarten”.
The tabloid Today published a video that shows Strache in a somewhat unmotivated scuffle with other men. The paper also promptly presented the story behind it, which was reportedly observed by a “reader reporter”.
Video shows Strache and alleged security
According to the paper, the 30-second video clip shows “an altercation with a security man.” Strache and another man are wrestling with each other on the video. Everything seems pretty half-hearted, as if neither of them were really using much force. Both seemed briefly out of balance – with Strache disappearing from the frame for a moment. In the next sequence, the ex-politician apparently tried to reach his opponent’s head with one hand.
Two other men held Strache back. The former Vice-Chancellor of the Second Austrian Republic tried to free himself from their grasp. The video ends with a scene in which a man holds Strache with an arm behind his neck and speaks to him urgently. However, the clip begins in the middle of the argument and does not show what triggered it.
Heinz-Christian Strache at a Pegida rally in Dresden on February 24, 2023. (archive image) © STRINGER / AFP
HC Strache after scuffle video: “It can happen to anyone”
The incident was confirmed to the tabloid from “several quarters”. The backstory of the video goes loud Today like this: Strache, now an entrepreneur, held a meeting with investors in a luxury hotel in Vienna and then went out to party. Then he fell asleep in the VIP area around 3 a.m. This roughly corresponds to Strache’s statement, which he spread on his Facebook page on Monday morning (December 18th). He had dozed off peacefully at a “Christmas party at a late hour.” This could “happen to anyone”, he is “only human”.
Then, Strache said, the securities woke him up. He was “clearly irritated for a moment” and was “accompanied out without a (sic!) fight”. This is “clearly evident in the video”. He complained that the media wanted to “generate” headlines at his expense.
Strache under suspicion: excessive parties at the top of the FPÖ
Strache liked to party even during his time as head of the right-wing authoritarian FPÖ. Long-time Strache bodyguard Oliver Ribarich, for example, reported on this in the joint podcast of the Austrian daily newspaper Standard and the German Spiegel„Inside Austria“.
According to Ribarich, Strache went out so much before he became Vice Chancellor that he “had to relax” on weekdays. Ribarich claimed that Strache “threw a screaming fit” when he had “two appointments in the morning” on his calendar. In such situations, Strache asked whether his employees “wanted to kill him”.
Heinz-Christian Strache in his fullest bloom as the newly elected FPÖ leader. © imago stock&people
Strache’s bodyguard no longer knew what to do and turned to the Ibiza lawyer
Ribarich is also said to have been the man who no longer knew how to help himself in the face of his boss’s administration and therefore contacted the Viennese lawyer Ramim M.. This ultimately ended in the trap organized in 2017 in a rented finca on the Spanish party island of Ibiza. The result was the so-called “Ibiza video”. In it, Strache and the FPÖ parliamentary group leader Johann Gudenus, visibly drunk, discussed various possibilities for abusing power with an alleged oligarch’s niece.
The end of this “b’soffnen G’schicht” was, after the publication of the video in 2019, the break of the coalition between the right-wing authoritarian FPÖ and the conservative ÖVP under the then Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP). Only the maker of the video, Julian Hessenthaler, was convicted. Namely for drug trafficking in a case that was heavily criticized by international human rights organizations. Strache was acquitted due to lack of evidence. But his statements in the video are still found in the investigation files of the economic and corruption prosecutor’s office to this day. (kibec)
2023-12-18 16:22:08
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