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After two and a half years in prison, the maker of the Ibiza video Julian Hessenthaler speaks exclusively to CORRECTIV about the creation of the Ibiza video and his imprisonment in Austria. Internal documents also show further doubts about the criminal case against him.
In the first interview after his release, Julian Hessenthaler reports in detail about the creation of the Ibiza video and accuses the Austrian judiciary of having wrongly sentenced him. He is now going to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The detective’s lawyer lodged a complaint there.
“Principal officials from the interior and justice ministries as well as the Federal Criminal Police Office tried to “silence” Hessenthaler “before and after the publication of the “Ibiza video” by criminal prosecution of drug offenses,” says the complaint CORRECTIV The court that convicted Hessenthaler declined to comment on the complaint before the ECHR.
Internal documents from the process, which CORRECTIV has now been able to see, reinforce the doubts about the proceedings against Hessenthaler. A letter from the prison shows that the public prosecutor’s office was able to read the lawyer’s mail themselves. It was to be handed over to the inmates “only after censorship had taken place”. CORRECTIV also has documents that show that cell phone surveillance was carried out at the office of Julian Hessenthaler’s German lawyer in Berlin. The judge also reproduces the statements of a witness for the prosecution differently in the verdict.
Julian Hessenthaler at large
Hessenthaler was released early from prison on April 7 for good behavior. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison primarily for drug possession.
Hessenthaler became known as the author of the “Ibiza video”, which triggered one of the biggest political scandals in Europe in 2019. On the holiday island of Ibiza, Hessenthaler organized and secretly filmed a meeting of two FPÖ leaders with an alleged oligarch’s niece. The film shows the then head of the right-wing populist FPÖ and later Vice-Chancellor of Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache, and his close confidant Johann Gudenus, also a FPÖ politician at the time, in conversation about possible corruption.
They discuss ways of illegal party funding and using government contracts in exchange for campaign support. Specifically: the purchase of the high-circulation Kronen Zeitung as a potential advertising paper for the party in return for government construction contracts. The publication of the video led to the government crisis under the then Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Hessenthaler, who worked as a detective, was later sentenced in Austria to three and a half years in prison for drug trafficking and forgery. The allegation had nothing to do with the production of the Ibiza video, which itself was not punishable. In Austria there were always doubts about the evidence in court proceedings.
70 minute exclusive interview
The proximity of European rights to Russia was one of the motives for the Ibiza video, Hessenthaler told CORRECTIV. He was “of the persistent conviction” that the Russian intelligence services had made massive efforts “to influence political decision-makers in Europe.”
In the 70-minute exclusive interview with CORRECTIV, Hessenthaler talks about how the video was planned and what consequences it had for him afterwards.
You can read the complete research under the following link: https://correctiv.org/?p=148364
You can watch the video interview with Hessenthaler here: https://correctiv.org/?p=148727
Press contact:
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Original content from: CORRECTIV, transmitted by news aktuell
