AUSTRIAN SCANDAL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19881, 7 March 1939, Page 5

AUSTRIAN SCANDAL

GERMAN ALLEGATIONS THEFTS AT CHANCELLERY i VIENNA, Feb. 24. The Kripo (criminal police) in Vienna report the discovery of scandalous embezzlements in tire former Austrian Chancellery. The German press makes use of the new discovery in attacking Drs. Schuscbnigg and Dollfuss. both formerly Austrian Chancellors. The Dollfuss fund was intended for administrative expenses and 1 for the Government Press Department. Some hundred thousand Austrian schillings were .taken from the fund every year and were secretly given to national newspaper companies, it is alleged. German police headquarters allege that considerable sums were distributed among foreign newspaper correspondents to make reports favourable to the Schuschnigg Government. Account of Archduke It is stated that 20.000 Austrian schillings were remitted every month to a bank in Brussels for the account of the Archduke Otto of Hapsburg, son of the last Austrian Emperor and arch-enemy of Herr Hitler. Two managers of big Austrian publishing firms and a former Cabinet director have been arrested. “They belong to those numerous people who were corrupted by Herr Schier, administrator of the .unci, says a police statement. Schier is accused of having spem. considerable sums of the fund on bis secretary, Miss Drzmisek. The legal proceedings are expect? to begin soon. They will be extended to make a political exhibition, in .he manner of the Soviet trials. ( The German news agency c.-.ums that the law suit will disclose corruption of morals among Jews. and former Social Democrats o< Vienna. The Archduke Otto is already outlawed in Germany and Austria for alleged “high treason.”