THE FORMER boyfriend of the late Jörg Haider has dismissed as a “conspiracy” claims the right-wing populist hid up to €45 million in Liechtenstein banks.
The allegations, made in yesterday's Profilmagazine, suggest Haider used a dozen postbox companies to hide the money.
The accounts were reportedly discovered during a long-running investigation into the controversial sale of the Hypo Group Alpe Adria Bank (HGAAB) to Germany’s Bayern LB in 2007.
Corruption allegations swirled around the sale of the Carinthia-based bank and the then regional leader, but no claims were ever proved.
“This is a conspiracy launched by government-friendly judges,” said Stefan Petzner, spokesperson for the BZÖ party and former partner of Haider.
“I simply can’t imagine sums on that scale – it could well be that someone is confusing schilling with euro.” The origin of the money discovered in the accounts is not clear, the magazine reported, but speculative transactions have reduced their initial €45 million value significantly to just €5 million.
Austrian investigators are probing whether the funds were related to Haider’s approval, as Carinthian governor, of the sale of HGAAB.
Access to the accounts was reportedly limited to Haider and three close allies in his party, the BZÖ, who are now likely to be questioned by police.
Haider’s widow, Claudia, said yesterday she knew nothing of the money. “Nothing showed up in the will,” she told the APA news agency.
Another possible source of the money, according to Profil, is the Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadafy whose son Saif al-Islam was a close friend of Haider.
Gadafy "always gave us money for elections: cash, sealed in plastic", said one unnamed Haider ally to Profil.
The Libyan leader is believed to have donated regularly sums of up to $200,000 (€153,000).
“We divided up the money into $7,000 bundles and then exchanged them into euro in banks all over Austria,” said the Haider confidante. “The sheer number of bank slips was madness.”
Haider died in October 2008 after crashing his car at high speed while drunk.