“B’soffene G’schicht” – a drunk story – was in Austria Word of the year 2019. Ex-FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache defended what could be seen on the internationally well-known Ibiza videos published by Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung. It’s about conversations covert party donations and corruptionthey led to the fall of the Austrian government.
The man behind the videos ended up in jail. But Julian Hessenthaler was not behind bars because of the videos himself, but because of alleged drug trafficking and forgery.
Area around Berlin lawyer monitored
Correctiv hat in a research the procedure against the Austrian private detective worked up. Hessenthaler himself says the trial against him provides “a blueprint for how to eliminate a politically unpopular actor – by simply accusing him of criminal offenses”.
The documents that Correctiv was able to see make it clear that German authorities also carried out surveillance measures for the Austrian investigators. They made radio cell queries in Berlin, and of all places around the office of the lawyer Johannes Eisenberg. According to the taz The surveillance was initiated by the Austrian Soko “Tape” from August 2019, at the request of the Vienna public prosecutor and a judge. Eisenberg tried unsuccessfully to take legal action against it.
Radio cell queries remained unsuccessful
The queries were unsuccessful, Hessenthaler’s number did not go into the network for the investigators. “Apparently, the investigators didn’t come up with the idea of simply calling me and offering me an appointment at a police station,” Hessenthaler told Correctiv. “The entire suspicion was from the outset illegal,” Eisenberg told the taz.
Hessenthaler was arrested in Berlin in December 2020 and later extradited to Austria. There, in 2022, a court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison for drug trafficking and forgery. Hessenthaler is now free again because of good leadership. But his case is not over yet. His lawyer lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in February. He accuses the judge of not considering “doubts about the evidence” in the proceedings and sees a “(partisan) political background to the case”.
