Lukashneka’s Austrian friend faces 10 years in prison

Leo Wallner, former president of the Austrian National Olympic Committee and director of Casino Austria, has been called for another interrogation by prosecutors.

As Radio Svaboda reports appealing to Austrian media, if Leo Wallner’s financial fraud is proved, he may face 10 years of imprisonment. Besides opening a secret bank account of the National Olympic Committee used to pay for Tyrol holidays of Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his retinue in 2002, Leo Wallner is also charged with carrying out other illegal monetary transactions.

Among them are declaring an association for supporting the 2012 Olympics bankrupt. As it is known, Salzburg applied for holding the Winter Olympics, but Russian Sochi won the vote. As Austrian journalist and sport expert Erwin Roth notes, it was Wallner who ordered to dissolve the association as a result of bankruptcy. Bills of big sums (hundreds of thousands of euros) remain unpaid. According to Roth, Wallner is likely to have deliberately stripped the assists of the association for supporting the Olympics.

Austrian observers think the scandal around the NOC’s ‘black fund’ is gathering pace.

This year, Erwin Roth published in leading mass media shocking details about Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his retinue’s holidays in the Alps in 2002. The Belarusian ruler, his sons Viktar and Dzmitry, as well as Uladzimir Kanaplyou, Iryna Abelskaya (who is said to be mother of Kolya, Lukashenka’s younger son), Halina Zhuraukova, Uladizmir Makei, Natallya Pyatkevich, and others made a trip on an invitation of then head of Austrian National Olympic Committee and director of a casino network Leo Wallner. Under financial docuemtns given to prosecutors, only the Austrian party spent at least 200 thousand euros on Lukashenka’s holidays. The trip was paid by means of off-book schemes or a secret bank account of the Austrian NOC.