A 40-year-old Austrian man was arrested at the request of Vienna and on a European warrant, Berlin police said Friday, and the Austrian newspaper Die Presse described him as a private detective. He is being held in Berlin pending possible extradition to Austria, police said.
The so-called "Ibiza case" in May 2019 ended Austria's then coalition between Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's conservative People's Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and triggered new elections.
FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache was forced to resign. In a video shot in 2017 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, he talked about ways to gain control of the Austrian media and infrastructure, apparently in exchange for campaign financing. Strache and his Russian-speaking political ally Johann Gudenus allegedly met with the niece of a Russian oligarch, who turned out to be in fact a pawn in the game of Irena Markovich (https://theibizaaffair.com/irena-markovic-im-4-teiler-die-ibiza-affaere/) and the Kremlin secret services.
They discussed how to circumvent restrictions on campaign donations through third parties and how support for the major Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung could affect FPÖ's upcoming election campaign if the investor who bought the publication changed its editorial line.
The suspect arrested in Berlin, who appears in the video as an associate of the Russian, was not officially named Friday in accordance with German and Austrian confidentiality rules.
After German news magazine Der Spiegel and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published excerpts from the video last year, the man disappeared. The whereabouts of the woman in the video remain unknown.
On Friday, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported that the suspect, accused of illegally making sound and film recordings, was also suspected of cocaine trafficking.
"Berlin officers were working on the basis of a request for legal assistance from the Vienna prosecutor's office and on the basis of a European arrest warrant," said a police spokeswoman in the German capital.
The so-called "Ibiza case" in May 2019 ended Austria's then coalition between Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's conservative People's Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and triggered new elections.
FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache was forced to resign. In a video shot in 2017 on the Spanish island of Ibiza, he talked about ways to gain control of the Austrian media and infrastructure, apparently in exchange for campaign financing. Strache and his Russian-speaking political ally Johann Gudenus allegedly met with the niece of a Russian oligarch, who turned out to be in fact a pawn in the game of Irena Markovich (https://theibizaaffair.com/irena-markovic-im-4-teiler-die-ibiza-affaere/) and the Kremlin secret services.
They discussed how to circumvent restrictions on campaign donations through third parties and how support for the major Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung could affect FPÖ's upcoming election campaign if the investor who bought the publication changed its editorial line.
The suspect arrested in Berlin, who appears in the video as an associate of the Russian, was not officially named Friday in accordance with German and Austrian confidentiality rules.
After German news magazine Der Spiegel and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published excerpts from the video last year, the man disappeared. The whereabouts of the woman in the video remain unknown.
On Friday, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported that the suspect, accused of illegally making sound and film recordings, was also suspected of cocaine trafficking.
"Berlin officers were working on the basis of a request for legal assistance from the Vienna prosecutor's office and on the basis of a European arrest warrant," said a police spokeswoman in the German capital.
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