Peter Hochegger (entrepreneur)

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Peter Hochegger (born February 20, 1949 in Mürzzuschlag ) is an Austrian entrepreneur and PR consultant .

Life

Hochegger studied business administration at the University of World Trade in Vienna . After consulting activities in various companies, he and his brother Paul founded the PR agency Hochegger Communications with a focus on management consulting with 50 employees. Hochegger specializes in public relations and lobbying strategies. He advised large Austrian companies such as Telekom Austria and Immofinanz . He also worked as a consultant for Porr AG and the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and organized the 2.4 million euro roadshow for the then Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser .

In 2007, Hochegger and Grasser founded the communication agency Valora Solutions Projektbegleitung GmbH, as a subsidiary of the TenForty Agency. Both the parent company and the subsidiary are now solely owned by the former FPÖ politician and lobbyist Walter Meischberger .

Peter Hochegger was arrested on August 16, 2016 near Graz in the private clinic St. Radegund and transferred to the Graz-Jakomini prison. On August 9, he did not appear at a penalty assessment date in a Telekom Austria case in the Vienna Regional Criminal Court. "The public prosecutor's office responded to his absence, which his lawyer justified with a mental breakdown in Switzerland and the indispensable treatment of Hochegger in Basel with an application for an arrest warrant for the risk of escape."

Involved in affairs

Together with Meischberger and Grasser, Hochegger is considered a key figure in numerous opaque businesses. According to the Austrian news magazine profil , more than 40 million euros in fees and commissions should have flowed through him in the period 2000 to 2006, in the era of the Black-Blue coalition , with the money mainly from state-affiliated companies such as Telekom Austria and the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) is said to have come. The beneficiaries of this money were members of the government and high-ranking officials through numerous consultancy contracts .

  • In January 2011, profil put the fees that Hochegger received from Telekom Austria over ten years at 25 million euros. This phase also includes the time when Hochegger's friend Karl-Heinz Grasser was finance minister and owner representative of the partially privatized Telekom. In August 2011, the Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office initiated an investigation against the former Transport Minister Hubert Gorbach (FPÖ / then BZÖ). After he left politics, Hochegger is said to have financed the ex-minister's private secretary through his company. It should have flowed 264,000 euros. In August 2011, Telekom boss Hannes Ametsreiter announced claims for damages in connection with the so-called Telekom affair . Of the damage amounting to 18 million euros, 9 million euros related to fees for Hochegger without documented consideration. In February 2012, profil published excerpts from the accounting of Valora AG. Accordingly, between 2000 and 2008, Telekom transferred a total of 38 million euros to Hochegger's group of companies, of which just under ten million euros perished at Valora .
  • BUWOG affair : In 2004, Hochegger and Meischberger received 9.6 million euros from the successful buyer Immofinanz in the course of the controversial privatization of federal apartments (BUWOG). According to reports, the two are said to have been paid by means of bogus bills through a Cypriot mailbox company. In September 2009, Meischberger and Hochegger filed a voluntary report for tax evasion.
  • Linz Terminal Tower Affair: In 2005, Hochegger and Meischberger received a consultancy fee of 200,000 euros from UBM Realitätenentwicklung to “remove obstacles in connection with an office project developed by Porr in Linz”. In March 2006, the then Austrian Finance Minister Grasser spoke out in favor of relocating the Upper Austrian Financial Directorate to the new Terminal Tower , although in December 2005 he had the rental negotiations broken off.
  • Sky-Link Terminal : Shortly after the start of the controversial Skylink Terminal in 1999, Hochegger was hired as a communications consultant by the political board of Vienna Airport . The cost of the new airport terminal will increase from 400 to 890 million euros.
  • Hochegger, the ÖBB bought the brand rights to the Railjet brand for € 180,000 , although this name was thought up by an ÖBB employee in a workshop.
  • Between 2006 and 2009, Hochegger received around 3.6 million euros from the Burgenland energy supplier BEWAG for services and transactions that were not exactly comprehensible, including in Hungary. The board members responsible at that time were therefore dismissed by BEWAG without notice in May 2011.
  • When the Austrian Post was partially privatized , Hochegger and Meischberger received a “success commission” of 350,000 euros from the advisory investment bank Raiffeisen Centrobank so that the investment house was not overlooked by the finance minister and his subordinate ÖIAG .

Further payments

The Bulgarian government paid Hochegger 1.5 million euros for an image campaign Reinforcing the Positive Image of the Republic of Bulgaria in the European Union. According to Hochegger, it should have been about the "assessment" of Bulgaria's image in the EU. Part of the money ended up with ex-ÖVP interior minister Ernst Strasser . He stated that he had received 100,000 euros for solving a problem with a foreign customer. The ÖVP parliamentary group of Christian trade unionists in the Austrian Trade Union Confederation (ÖGB) received a “marketing grant / telecommunications grant” in the amount of 30,000 euros. The central organ of the Freedom Party , the Neue Freie Zeitung, received a "printing fee" of 200,000 euros in 2004 in return for several articles on "regulatory measures in the telecommunications sector". SPÖ member Kurt Gartlehner also received around 30,000 euros from Hochegger in 2007 for an expertise on broadband expansion and regulatory policy. Numerous other payments are said to have flowed to the former FPÖ politician and lobbyist Walter Meischberger .

Criminal proceedings

In January 2013, the Vienna public prosecutor brought charges against Hochegger in the so-called Telekom Austria affair . Together with Rudolf Fischer , Klaus Wittauer and other people, he was accused of infidelity , false evidence and money laundering . In September 2013, Hochegger was sentenced to two and a half years of unconditional imprisonment in this case. On November 25, 2015, the Supreme Court confirmed Hochegger's guilty verdict, but ordered the false testimony procedure to be carried out again against him.

On July 21, 2016, the public prosecutor's office for business and corruption announced that he would bring charges against Hochegger, Karl-Heinz Grasser , Walter Meischberger , Ernst Plech and twelve other people in the BUWOG and Terminal Tower cases . According to the indictment, the total damage caused amounts to ten million euros, resulting in a sentence of up to ten years in prison.

In his testimony in court, Hochegger incriminated his co-defendants Meischberger and Grasser. The "key information" had come from Meischberger, who also said expressly that without Karlheinz, neither of them would have received the millions in commissions.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ A b Buwog affair: Peter Hochegger gives up PR agency . In: The press . September 25, 2009
  2. ^ A b Christian Böhmer and Philipp Hacker: Peter Hochegger, the millionaire juggler ( Memento from November 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In: Courier . October 10, 2010
  3. ^ Buberl, best man, tax evader: Meischberger in portrait . In: The press . 4th August 2010
  4. ^ Christoph Winder: Valora Solutions . In: The Standard . September 29, 2009
  5. ↑ Valora Solutions Projektbegleitung GmbH ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.firmenabc.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Entry on FirmenABC.at. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  6. ↑ Ex-lobbyist Hochegger arrested: Lawyer: “Totally inappropriate” orf.at, August 16, 2016, accessed August 16, 2016.
  7. ↑ a b Michael Nikbakhsh & Ulla Kramar-Schmid : Take and let take . In: profile . February 12, 2011
  8. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh & Ulla Kramar-Schmid: Exclusive: Telekom paid 25 million to Grasser friend Hochegger ( memento of the original from January 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.profil.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: profile . January 29, 2011
  9. ^ Telecom scandal - serious allegations against Gorbach . In: News . August 24, 2011
  10. ↑ Telecom affair could widen . In: The Standard . August 25, 2011
  11. ^ Lawyer: TA planned a secret pact with key witnesses . In: The Standard . August 29, 2011
  12. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh & Ulla Kramar-Schmid: Should have! ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.profil.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: profile . February 21, 2012
  13. ↑ Renate Graber: Buwog: Grasser friends report self . In: The Standard . September 24, 2009
  14. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh, Josef Redl & Ulla Kramar-Schmid: profile online: New house searches in the Buwog / Meischberger affair . In: profile . January 28, 2010
  15. ^ Buwog affair: House search at the Porr construction company . In: The press . January 28, 2010
  16. ^ Rainer Fleckl & Erich Vogl: New explosive: The air is getting thinner for Grasser . In: Courier . November 12, 2011
  17. ↑ Pipal was "shocked" by Grasser in the tower project . In: The press . May 10, 2012
  18. ↑ ÖBB bought Hochegger's self-created brand . In: The Standard . August 29, 2011
  19. ^ Josef Redl: Wind Business . In: profile . 17th September 2011
  20. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh & Ulla Kramar-Schmid: 350,000 euros “success commission” . In: profile . March 17, 2012
  21. ^ TA: Indictment against Hochegger, Fischer, Wittauer . In: ORF . January 21, 2013
  22. ↑ Telecom Trial: Very different judgments . In: oe1.orf.at , September 14, 2013
  23. ↑ Guilty verdicts confirmed for Rumpold and Hochegger , orf.at , November 25, 2015
  24. ^ Allegations of corruption: charges against Grasser, Meischberger and 14 other people in Causa Buwog and Linz Terminal Tower. derStandard.at, July 21, 2016, accessed on July 21, 2016 .
  25. ^ ORF : The Flow of Information , December 21, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Hochegger, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian entrepreneur and political advisor
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Mürzzuschlag