PRESS FREEDOM IN DANGER – AUSTRIAN JOURNALISTS ISSUE UNPRECEDENTED WARNING

 

State prosecutors in Austria ordered journalists reporting on a financial scandal to be interrogated by police even though they had not broken any law, sparking unprecedented warnings from journalists and unions that the freedom of the press in Austria is under threat.

http://www.orf.at/stories/2016396/2016414/

The reporters from the weekly news magazines “Profil” and “News” printed extracts from files on an investigation into the scandal-hit bank Hypo Alpe Adria obtained from German state prosecutors, violating criminal laws in Germany that carry a prison sentence of up to one year.

However, in Austria printing extracts from state prosecutor’s files is allowed.

http://blog.profil.at/index.php/michaelnikbakhsh/hypo-alpe-adria-profil-journalisten-zielscheiben-der-justiz

Nevertheless, Vienna state prosecutors ordered the journalists Ulla Schmid and Michael Nikbakhsh from Profil as well as Kurt Kuch from News to be interrogated by police after receiving a request from their counterparts in Munich.

Franz C. Bauer, President of the Union of Journalists warned of „an attack without parallel on the press freedom in [Austria].”

“Politicians and officials paid for by taxes are clearly trying to apply foreign laws to Austria capriciously and so to restrict the freedom of expression,“ he said.

The scandal comes just as the ORF state television station was obliged to hand over film material to a court following an order breaching a law protecting confidentiality of journalistic source.

Austrian Justice Minister Dr Claudia Bandion-Ortner has been battered by criticism recently for misusing the judicial system to further the interests of lobbyists and banks such as Hypo Alpe Adria, Lower Austrian Hypo Investment Bank and Raiffeisen embroiled in the subprime scandal, and now it seems her targets are critical journalists.

The head of Raiffeisen bank Christian Konrad allegedly offered the Justice Minister Dr Bandion-Ortner her job after a private meeting in a café.

Bandion-Ortner refused to answer parliamentary questions posed on her meeting, which sparked fears of conflicts of interests.

http://www.giebelkreuzregime.at/index.php?sid=item&iid=9&cid=3

The Austrian financial regulators filed criminal charges against HIB manager Peter Harold  and another manager for cooking books and fraud with respect to subprime mortages from Lehman Brothers.

http://derstandard.at/1282979850566/Investmentbank-Praesident-der-Hypo-NOe-rechnet-mit-Strafe

But the probe was dropped unexpectedly a few weeks ago by prosecutors in St Pölten – the capital of the federal state Lower Austria that is controlled by the uncle of the current Finance Minister Josef Pröll –, and apparently after an intervention by the Justice Minister.

The St Polten’s state prosecutor’s file was later declared lost when the financial regulators asked to see why the case had been dropped.

The bankers have every reason to be nervous about any investigation into the fraud that has crashed the economies of Europe and the USA and cost hundreds of billions of euros in bailouts and the souvereign debt interest payments alone.

Just as there was no wine flu pandemic virus and no need for swine flu vaccines, in the same way there was no banking or liquidity crisis, and no need for gigantic infusions of cash by tax payers.

Just as the swine flu pandemic was a fake media hyped crisis, so was the subprime crisis.

The banks stand to make huge profits if they can cut off the liquidity from clients, forcing companies into bankruptcy and increasing unemployment. Banks can then seize the underlying assets – companies, houses from owners who can’t keep up mortgage payments etc – for a pittance.

Given the fact the money banks lend is thin air thanks to the fractional reserve banking system, they lose very little actual capital  in an economic crash but gain valuable assets.

If bankers gobbled up assets without creating the smoke screen of a “crisis” – in this case the fake subprime crisis – they would be facing criminal charges for fraud.

But if they can get the general public to believe they were forced to cut lending and take money out of circulation to pay for “debts”, they can get away with fraud on a gigantic scale under the smokescreen of misinformation of the corporate-controlled mainstream media hides the truth.

Banks got billions in government bailouts, allowing them to buy up assets at knock down prices in the same economy that they crashed. Hypo Alpe Adria was “taken over” by the Austrian government resulting in a transfer of billions of euros of taxpayer money to the bankers.

Banks that lent the governments the “bailout money”  also get interest payments on the gigantic and ever growing mountain of souvereign debt, sucking tax payers dry and crushing economies even further into the ground as is the case in Greece and Ireland together with the help of allied credit rating agencies.

HIB, Hypo Alpe Adria and Raiffeisen are the banks in Austria allegedly at the forefront of this fraud, and clearly have much reason to fear an investigation and media coverage.

In Austria, a former lobbyist for HIB, Helmut Brandstätter, is now the chief editor of the Kurier newspaper, underlining the close links between the banks and the mainstream media that omits vital information.

http://derstandard.at/1282979850566/Investmentbank-Praesident-der-Hypo-NOe-rechnet-mit-Strafe

And now clearly any journalist in Austria who does dare to investigate this scandal that cuts at the heart of the globalist network has to reckon with oppression from the state prosecutors as the country takes on an increasingly totalitarian character.