Walter Meischberger

Walter Meischberger (* 21st September 1959 in Innsbruck ) is an Austrian businessman and former politician of the FPÖ .

Life

Walter Meischberger was born as the son of an ÖVP council from Kematen in Tyrol . After compulsory school he graduated from the Pinkafeld Technical College specializing in heating, sanitary and air conditioning technology. It was there that he met Gernot Rumpold . After graduating from school as a heating technician and completing his military service , he worked in his parents' company from 1981 onwards. From 1982 onwards, he taught at the vocational school for plumbers in Innsbruck. In 1985 he opened a mineral oil trade in Innsbruck and operated two petrol stations, which he later sold again.

In 1987 there was a personal encounter with the then FPÖ boss Jörg Haider . Meischberger was first local group chairman of the FPÖ in Kematen. From 1988 to 1991 he was State Secretary General of the FPÖ Tirol and from 1991 to 1995 Deputy State Party Chairman. Meischberger was the top candidate of the FPÖ-Tirol three times. In the federal party he was federal executive director from 1989 to 1990 and general secretary from 1990 to 1995. From 1990 he also held the office of managing director of the Neue Freie Zeitung, the party newspaper of the FPÖ. Meischberger was responsible for the national election campaign for the implementation and organization of the National Council elections. Together with Gernot Rumpold and Peter Westenthaler , he was assigned to Haider's so-called “ Buberlpartie ”; he is considered the first, as "Ur-Buberl".

In April 1989 Meischberger became the youngest member of the second republic in the Federal Council . From 1990 to 1999 he was a member of the Austrian National Council and from 1995 to 1999 he was deputy FPÖ club chairman . In parliament, Meischberger was active in committees for transport, foreign policy and economics, as well as media, motorists and South Tyrol spokesman for his club.

After a conviction for inciting tax evasion, committed in the course of his work as a consultant for a footballer's club change, Meischberger had to resign from his mandate under public pressure in February 1999. After some MPs waived their mandate, Meischberger would have been entitled to move up on the list of the FPÖ in April of the same year and thus return to the National Council. Before he was sworn in, he was expelled from the FPÖ. Meischberger did not take up his mandate and thus "waived" his politician's pension 39 days before the necessary ten years of membership in parliament. In fact, he is said to have received 2.5 million schillings (181,682 euros) from the FPÖ in the form of a bearer savings account.

From 1994 he got into the textile trade and was involved in two fashion boutiques, which are now closed (2010). In May 1997 REKLAME BÜRO Werbe GmbH was founded, which was renamed in November and, after another renaming, since April 2005 has been called ZehnVierzig Agentur für strategic Kommunikation GmbH . He is 100% shareholder and managing director of this Viennese company. In 2000 Meischberger founded, managed and established Seitenblicke Magazin in the Austrian media landscape. In 2004 he sold his shares in Seitenblicke Verlags GmbH to Red Bull GmbH .

In autumn 2006 Meischberger was from the 1998 ORF Trustees resigned to the proposal of the BZÖ as government representatives in the ORF Foundation sent from which he resigned after the change of government the Cabinet Gusenbauer.

In 2007 he founded the communication agency Valora Solutions Projektbegleitung GmbH with Karl-Heinz Grasser and agency owner Peter Hochegger , as a subsidiary of the TenForty Agency. Both the parent company and the subsidiary are meanwhile solely owned by Meischberger.

Political affairs

Meischberger is involved in numerous political affairs. According to the public prosecutor's office, he is said to have benefited from numerous privatizations that his friend Karl-Heinz Grasser initiated as finance minister.

BUWOG affair

→ Main article : BUWOG affair

In September 2009, Meischberger and Hochegger filed a voluntary report for tax evasion. When the state real estate company BUWOG was sold to Immofinanz , initiated by his friend and then Finance Minister Grasser, Meischberger paid neither income tax nor sales tax for a commission of 8 million euros in 2004.

The telephone tapping logs of Meischberger's telephone conversations with Karl-Heinz Grasser, which can now also be viewed on the website of the Austrian Parliament, were published for the first time by the Viennese weekly magazine Falter and subsequently cited by other media. With his legendary saying “I'm super naked” he signaled that he cannot remember for which part of his performance he would have received a commission of 700,000 euros (in the Viennese dialect “naked” means “mental nudity”. in the sense of ignorance or simplicity), as shown in Georg Danzer's song Jö schau . His Sager "Wos woa mei performance?" In a telephone conversation with Ernst Plech was organized by the Research Center for Austrian German awarded Unspruch 2011.

Terminal Tower Affair

The affair surrounding the Terminal Tower in Linz is considered a sideline to the BUWOG affair. The project operators of the Terminal Tower, the Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberösterreich and the Porr tried to win the Finanzlandesdirektion Oberösterreich as tenants. The then Austrian Finance Minister Grasser initially rejected the relocation of the regional financial directorate, which was subordinate to him, but revised his decision shortly after UBM Realitätenentwicklung (UBM) paid Meischberger and Hochegger a consulting fee of 200,000 euros in order to resolve "obstacles in connection with one of Porr's in Linz developed office project out of the way ".

Tetron affair

→ Main article : Tetron affair

Meischberger is also involved in the Tetron affair, in which the lobbyist Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly influenced the tender for a digital radio system for authorities and emergency services in favor of the Tetron consortium consisting of Motorola , Alcatel and Telekom Austria .

Novomatic affair

The weekly magazine Falter published new details on the Novomatic affair in January 2012 . In 2006 - according to ÖVP parliamentarian Günter Stummvoll in a testimony - Grasser's people literally "taken the ÖVP parliamentary club by surprise" in order to weaken the gaming monopoly. The machine group Novomatic and Telekom Austria , who had already worked out plans for a joint project, would have benefited from this. A total of 465,000 euros are said to have flowed from Novomatic to Valora Solutions , in which Meischberger was involved in addition to Grasser and Hochegger.

accusation

On July 21, 2016, the public prosecutor's office for business and corruption announced that it would bring charges against Meischberger and Karl-Heinz Grasser , Peter Hochegger , 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.

Private

Meischberger is divorced and has two children. Meischberger was the best man at the wedding of the then Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser with Fiona Pacifico Griffini in 2005.

Web links

Wikiquote: Walter Meischberger  - Quotes

• Walter Meischberger on the website of the Austrian Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} APA: Buberl, best man, tax evader: Meischberger in portrait , diepresse.com, August 4, 2010 (Apparently with the wrong company name for Valora, unless there are two similar ones.)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Lucian Mayringer: Haider's “Ur-Buberl”: Walter Meischberger in focus , nachrichten.at, August 5, 2010
3. ^ FPÖ is said to have bought Meischberger's resignation in 1999 , DerStandard, from June 23, 2010
4. ↑ Michael Nikbakhsh, Josef Redl and Ulla Schmid: The Buwog court file: Meischberger paid Grasser Seychelles vacation ( memento of the original from September 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , profil.at, April 17, 2010 
5. ↑ Ten-Forty Agency for Strategic Communication GmbH. ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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 September 19, 2010. 
6. ↑ When Meischberger writes an email to the ORF General , press article from February 15, 2011
7. ↑ Christoph Winder: Valora Solutions , DerStandard.at, September 29, 2009
8. ↑ Valora Solutions Projektbegleitung GmbH. ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Entry on firmenabc.at. Retrieved September 19, 2010. 
9. ↑ 350,000 euros “Success Commission” profile , March 17, 2012
10. ↑ EXCLUSIVE: Plech and Meischberger's interrogation protocols reveal new accounts ... ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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. Format , October 28, 2011 
11. ↑ Die Presse: Did Grasser know witnesses from Berner? DiePresse.com of July 29, 2010
12. ↑ Renate Graber: Buwog: Grasser friends reimburse voluntary disclosure , Der Standard & derstandard.at, September 24, 2009
13. ↑ ORF : Suspicion of infidelity: Grasser friends in sight  ( page no longer accessible , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  July 10, 2010
14. ↑ Parliamentary inquiry from members of parliament and friends to the Federal Minister of Justice regarding tape recordings in the Meischberger, Piech, Grasser case (PDF file; 158 kB)
15. ↑ Meischberger Protocols: What is the performance? at die.presse.com
16. ↑ I'm super naked now , accessed on October 27, 2011
17. ↑ diepresse.com: listening protocol Meischberger / Grasser: "I'm super naked"
18. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The 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. 
19. ↑ Grasser interception protocols published December 21, 2010 at standard.at
20. ↑ Astrid Wintersberger: Der kleine Wappler, So flucht und Schschft Österreich , Residenz Verlag, 3rd edition, ISBN 978 3 7017 1599 2
21. ↑ "Where woa mei achievement?" Is Unspruch of the year 2011. Kleine Zeitung, 7 December 2011
22. ↑ "Where woa my performance?": Meischberger reveals Tippgeber heute.at, April 18, 2016
23. ^ Buwog affair: House search at the Porr DiePresse.com construction company , January 28, 2010
24. ^ Orf.at: ÖVP: Grasser oppressed party
25. ^ 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 .