What’s the admissibility of investigators’ covert recordings in Europe? Examining courts’ sticky legal and ethical issues

In May 2019, two major German media publications, DER SPIEGEL and Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, released parts of a video purportedly showing Heinz-Christian Strache, then vice chancellor of Austria, and Johann Gudenus, former deputy mayor of Vienna, solicit illegal campaign support from a supposed niece of a Russian oligarch.

The video was recorded covertly two years before its publication in the run-up to the 2017 Austrian general election that resulted in the party of the two men — the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria — forming a governing coalition with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservative Austrian People’s Party.

On the tape, the “Russian” woman is heard seeking investment opportunities for 250 million euros, which she claims “cannot be deposited at a bank.” Strache is then seen suggesting possible mutually beneficial solutions and then alluding to illegal financing channels for his party and trying to convince her to buy one of Austria’s most widely circulated newspapers to influence voters in his favor — all, he suggests, in exchange for casino licenses and contracts for highway construction. (See The Strache Recordings – The Whole Story, by Maik Baumgärtner, Vera Deleja-Hotko, Martin Knobbe, Walter Mayr, Alexandra Rojkov and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt, Spiegel International, May 5, 2019.)