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Highlights From the Video That Brought Down Austria’s Vice Chancellor

Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache addressing the news media in Vienna on Saturday.Credit...Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

BERLIN — A secretly filmed video that led Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria’s far-right vice chancellor, to step down on Saturday is filled with eyebrow-raising moments, according to excerpts published by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Mr. Strache not only resigned from his post less than 24 hours after the release of the video footage, which was recorded in July 2017 in a rented villa in Ibiza, Spain. He also vowed to resign as leader of the Freedom Party. The scandal prompted Chancellor Sebastian Kurz later on Saturday to call for a snap election, saying at a news conference in Vienna, “After yesterday’s video, enough is enough.”

[Read more of our coverage on the resignation and the fallout.]

Here’s what we learned from the taped conversations, which lasted for hours and were accompanied by more than a little alcohol (as well as sushi, tuna tartar and energy drinks).

Five people took part in the meeting, according to the German news outlets, which examined the tapes but have not released the full recordings.

They included Mr. Strache; a woman who said she was the niece of a Russian oligarch; an interpreter; another Freedom Party official, Johann Gudenus, who seems to have set up the meeting; and Mr. Gudenus’s wife, Tajana.

In the footage, the woman says she wants to invest a quarter-billion euros in Austria, and Mr. Strache explores ways that such a giant investment would help his Freedom Party.

Mr. Strache tells the presumed investor that he’s been to Russia many times and that he has met with advisers of President Vladimir V. Putin to plan for “strategic collaboration,” according to Der Spiegel.

At one point, he suggests that the woman could help his party in the 2017 election.

One other option discussed: taking state road contracts away from Austria’s largest construction company, Strabag, one of Europe’s biggest builders, and turning them over to a company she would found.

Whether any of the deals discussed bore fruit is unclear, since the meeting appeared to be a setup.

Since the Freedom Party came to power, it has had an antagonistic relationship with the news media. The crux of the conversation in 2017 was about the woman taking over the tabloid Kronen Zeitung.

In the recorded conversations, Mr. Strache suggests that with her in control, she could give his party favorable coverage and lift its poll numbers.

“If she takes over the Krone newspaper three weeks before election and brings us to spot No. 1, then we can talk about anything,” Mr. Strache says.

While suggesting that some of the editorial staff of Kronen Zeitung should be fired, he said most would play along. Mr. Strache called journalists “the biggest” prostitutes on the planet, though he used a crasser term.

When the video excerpts were published, Kronen Zeitung responded with a headline using the party’s German initials: “FPÖ Is Finished.”

Besides his focus on Kronen Zeitung, Mr. Strache seemed to be particularly set on restructuring ORF, Austria’s public broadcaster — even mentioning privatization.

“We want to build a media landscape like Orban did,” Mr. Strache says in the tape.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has turned his country’s public news media into a pro-government propaganda machine, and allies have gradually bought up whole sectors of the private news industry.

During its short time as junior coalition partner, the Freedom Party has attacked Austrian journalists and suggested cutting public broadcast fees.

Parts of the conversation were translated into Russian by Mr. Gudenus, who had spent a couple of semesters in Russia and speaks the language, although seemingly with some difficulty.

At one point, Mr. Gudenus raises his hand in a gun gesture, trying to explain that the party was getting untraceable donations from Gaston Glock, the Austrian behind the Glock pistol, as well.

Mr. Glock has denied the allegation.

Der Spiegel reported that after six hours of conversation with the woman and her interpreter, Mr. Strache appeared to sense a trap.

Mr. Gudenus, however, convinced him otherwise. “No, it’s not a trap,” he tells the vice chancellor on tape.

During his news conference on Saturday, when he announced his resignation, Mr. Strache said in an emotional speech that he would go after people involved in what he called a trap, promising legal action. The only name mentioned was that of Jan Böhmermann, a German comedian who had joked about a month before the video was released about the Freedom Party drinking in an oligarch’s villa in Ibiza.

It’s not clear what connection, if any, there is between the joke and the video.

During the news conference on Saturday, Mr. Strache took a defiant tone against those who had released the video.

He did, however, apologize for his part in a conversation he insisted was private, saying it was typical “macho behavior” brought on by alcohol, and probably, the desire to impress the “attractive hostess.”

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