The Haider Diaries

[mgc1961]

Many consider him to be a revanchist. A far-right agitator. A disagreeable populist. But in his home state of Carinthia, the Austrian politician Jörg Haider, who died in a car accident in 2008, is still revered. The highest bridge in the state is named after him and a monument where he lost his life has become a pilgrimage site. His followers have even created a Haider museum. On display: his desk, his sneakers, his rocking horse.

But the perfect idyll created by Haider's followers is no longer quite so perfect these days. And his many critics are even beginning to wonder if the right-wing politician may in fact have been a criminal.

Carinthia's favorite son has been back in the headlines in Austria this week after the newsmagazine Profil reported last Saturday that Haider may have possessed a substantial, and secret, fortune. Some €45 million ($59 million) allegedly belonging to shell companies owned by Haider was reportedly parked for a time in secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein. The accounts are said to have been discovered during ongoing investigations into the 2004 privatization of the Austrian residential construction firm Buwog and the controversial takeover of the Carinthia-based bank Hypo Group Alpe Adria by the state-owned Bavarian bank BayernLB in 2007.

State prosecutors have denied knowledge of the accounts and it remains unclear to what degree the suspicions reported by Profil might be based in fact. But speculation as to where the money might have come from has been rampant. Profil names Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi as a possible source. Other names are likewise circulating, such as that of former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein.


Read it all at http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,710574,00.html

[JVS]

1. "Many consider him to be a revanchist. A far-right agitator." And they're right.

[hobbit709]

2. Carinthia is basically the red state area of Austria.

[mgc1961]

3. Wondering about revanchist?

The word kinda looks like an "r" was left out but this word has nothing to do with Christ.

re-vanche n. the policy of a state intent on regaining areas of its original territory that have been lost to other states as a result of war, a treaty signed under duress, etc.

re-vanchist n. 1. an advocate or supporter of a political policy of revanche, esp. in order to seek vengeance for a previous military defeat. - adj. 2. of or pertaining to a political policy of revanche. 3. of or pertaining to revanchists or revanchism.