Information in English
Interview with H.P. Martin: “I was also offered money by Zach!”
Die Presse: 15 Million Euros have been transferred from Strabag to Zach’s company. Do you believe that the money was for counselling-services?
Hans-Peter Martin: With all due respect for Zach and his business partner Zoltan Aczel (both very young men, only mid-20s). But exceeding 15,2 million Euros for counselling-Services? No-one in the world would pay this amount of money for that. That is plainly unthinkable. Especially Zach is well advised to urgently disclose what the Millions where spend for, considering that he is running for a political office and that he has always claimed to stand for transparency within the liberal party.
Zach claims that he had nothing to do with the Hungarian part of the business.
Martin: Well, this is demonstrably false! There is a fax, dated 21st April 2005, in which Mr Zach personally bills for project M5.
Have you been in contact with Mr Zach?
Martin: Yes, Mr Zach and Mr Aczel approached me during the time period in question when the deals on Highway 5 and the payment of the commission were closing. Totally out of the blue they offered not only to support me running for the European-Election in 2004 but also to finance the campaigning. They made it perfectly clear that there would be sufficient funds. I was not only surprised by this, but also suspicious. It goes without saying that I declined their offer.
Do you think there will be further party-financing?
Martin: I would like to strongly encourage Hans-Peter Haselsteiner, who I have known for many years: please disclose to whom else you made donations – as you now claim they were for building democracy. And that was not only in Hungary. I further ask him not only to lay open his ideological connections with the Austrian Social Democrats, which he recently disclosed, but also lay open his financial connections and his business relations to the SPÖ. We must not allow Austria to become the centre of such dubious payments, because there is hardly another country in the world with a comparable intransparent party financing system!
Published in the Austrian newspaper “Die Presse”, Sept. 22nd 2006