"Boxes not packed"

Shredded files: Hartinger-Klein knows nothing

Former Health Minister Beate Hartinger-Klein (FPÖ) 2019(Bild: APA/ROBERT JAEGER)

"I ordered all documents to be handed over to the state archives as required by law" - with these words, former Health Minister Beate Hartinger-Klein commented on the accusation that she had shredded files. She did not know what happened to the paper documents. She had not packed any boxes.

Available documents show, for example, an email from May 2019 from a civil servant to two colleagues at the Ministry of Health, stating that he had contacted a member of the former minister's cabinet "to pack paper documents under lock and key in archive boxes to the State Archives".

It turned out "that all paper from the offices in the cabinet of the FBM (Federal Minister, note) had been destroyed on a grand scale. (Data protection container disposed of)"

Furthermore, the official had heard that the head of the cabinet office had called the archive to announce "that no physical documents from our department were to be expected".

The only exceptions were "ELAK data files", i.e. electronic files, which had also been handed over to the State Archives. However, these are blocked for 25 years and only Hartinger-Klein can allow access. However, she has so far refused to do so.

In a nutshell: what the case is about

On Tuesday, documents were leaked to the U-Committee on the "red-blue abuse of power", which show that numerous files relating to the merger of the social insurance institutions were allegedly destroyed after the collapse of the turquoise-blue government in 2019. However, the former FPÖ health minister does not want to know anything about a shredding campaign during her time as minister.

"Where there is no documentation, it is difficult for us to check"
On Tuesday evening, ACA President Margit Kraker criticized the lack of access to files from the time when Hartinger-Klein was minister on "ZiB2": "Where there is no documentation, it is difficult for us to check (....)."

They were surprised, "because this was about a consultancy contract that was ultimately awarded to a consultant for 10.6 million euros, and we couldn't find that in the documentation."