Johannes Hübner is an ex-Austrian politician and Member of the Federal Parliament for Vienna South-West for the Freedom Party of Austria 2008 – 2017. He formerly sat in parliament for Vienna District 4. He was until October 2017 the party’s representative on Foreign Affairs.
On 3 February 2023, leaked emails indicated that a Kremlin-linked lobbying group offered settlements to several European politicians to encourage pro-Russia policies. According to these emails, Johannes Hübner was in this body of politicians, and he gets €20,000 for holding an address in the Austrian parliament against sanctions on Russia. He would have accepted an extra €15,000 if the vote had been successful.
A Motion for a resolution was recorded on the official parliament website on June 7, 2016, to withdraw sanctions imposed on Russia due to “considerable “damage to the Austrian economy” (the same supposition as in leaked emails).
According to a detailed description by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a non-profit organization that studies and exposes organized crime and corruption around the world, hacked and revealed emails reveal extensive evidence that the Russian lobbyists prepared to pay far-right European politicians thousands of euros to put forward pro-Russian resolutions in EU legislatures. The emails also demonstrate that the lobbying group supported arranging for political figures from several European countries to be flown on costly junkets to pro-Russia events in occupied Crimea and spent honoraria for their presence. Furthermore, the group fled several European political figures to Russia as official election watchers.
The emails belong to Russian parliamentary staffer Sargis Mirzakhanian, the coordinator of the “International Agency for Current Policy,” Mirzakhanian created a network of political pundits, journalists, activists, and academics who supported him push the Kremlin’s stakes abroad. The emails reveal his role in coordinating protests, placing media articles, and qualifying parliamentary resolutions across Europe while organizing “fake” election compliance missions as he and his associates aimed to legitimize the annexation of Crimea and “advance Russian domestic and foreign policy interests.”
The group was also developed for Austrian Member of Parliament Johannes Hübner, from a far-right party presenting resolutions in his respective legislatures to withdraw sanctions against Russia. The project procedures did not specify how this would be achieved, but a “budget” of 20,000 euros was assigned for resolutions, with an additional 15,000 euros for each in case of victorious voting. Whether these sums were planned for the politicians or the entire assignment remains unclear. Ultimately, the resolutions were offered by Hübner but were not adopted by legislators.
