Austrian Government Falls Due to Corruption Scandal

(Patria) - The government of conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz fell on Monday after the majority in parliament voted no confidence, APA reports, as cited by Al Jazeera.

This is the epilogue of the affair, at the center of which was the release of a secret video recording in which the then leader of the far-right and Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache offered contracts with the state to a fake niece of a Russian oligarch in exchange for financial support for his party.

Strache subsequently resigned as Vice-Chancellor, and Kurz called for early elections and dissolved the coalition of his conservative People's Party (OeVP) with Strache's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).

The motion for a vote of no confidence in the government of the 32-year-old Chancellor was submitted on Monday by the Social Democrats, and was supported by Kurz's former coalition partner, the Freedom Party.

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen had previously spoken out against the "downfall" of the transitional government, and while swearing in new ministers, he appealed to politicians not to think in party-political terms, but in state-building terms until the early elections.