Sebastian Kurz reported to the »Standard«. Kurz, who is an astonishingly young former chancellor at the age of 35, is starting a new professional phase in his life. He confirms that he will start a job in the USA: He will be a "Global Strategist" at Thiel Capital, a company owned by the German-born US investor Peter Thiel. The job title suggests a broad field of activity and suggests a lot of travel activity. In any case, the company is based in West Hollywood, California, that sounds pleasant. Commencement of work is in the first quarter, as Kurz explains. He doesn't want to say much more about it now, he doesn't give any interviews at the moment, he now keeps his distance from the media, from everyone, he claims.
The fact that Kurz will be working from California in the future and at least commuting a lot is remarkable in that he justified his withdrawal from politics at the beginning of December by wanting to spend time with his newborn son and his family.
At least that will be difficult now.
The move to the USA is also remarkable from another point of view: Kurz's new employer is an extremely colorful figure in many ways.
Thiel's personal fortune was estimated by Forbes in 2016 at more than 2.7 billion US dollars.
The 54-year-old, who has German and American citizenship as well as New Zealand citizenship, co-founded the online payment service PayPal.
Thiel is also the co-founder of Palantir Technologie.
This company helps authorities and institutions to evaluate large amounts of data.
The software is also intended to support intelligence services in the fight against terrorism.
The close cooperation with secret services and the development of spy software caused criticism from data protectionists.
Thiel was the first external investor in the social network Facebook.
In 2004, he committed $ 500,000, and later sold Facebook shares for more than $ 1 billion.
Thiel's political commitment is also interesting.
He was an active supporter of Donald Trump.
In 2016, Thiel gave a speech at the Republican Congress in which he presented Trump as the savior of the nation.
His statement there caused a stir: “I'm proud to be gay.
I am proud to be a Republican.
Most of all, I'm proud to be an American. "
In 2017 Thiel married his long-term partner Matt Danzeisen, allegedly in Vienna.
He was outed against his will, however, in 2007 by the US gossip blog Gawker.
Thiel finally led a legal campaign against this online portal by supporting other lawsuits financially.
Gawker eventually had to stop appearing.
Thiel's understanding of politics is at least irritating. His critics believe that he adheres to a "post-democratic" philosophy. Democracy is an outdated and insufficiently powerful instrument that would best be replaced by the rule of ingenious entrepreneurs. In his book "Zero to One" Thiel advocates the thesis that free competition lowers profits. Therefore, company founders should strive for monopolies as often as possible. "Competition is something for losers," Thiel summarized his philosophy. Monopolies are the real engines of progress, and competition only destroys valuable creative resources.
In the People's Party in Vienna, one does not even want to deal with Thiel's theses, the new leadership is happy that the former chancellor, party leader and savior has firstly found a job that employs him and that it is as far away from domestic political events as possible is. Many of Kurz's close confidants have left politics, ministries and the party in the past few weeks, while others have only changed positions and are now still working for the People's Party - and possibly for Kurz or for him.
There is a reason why Kurz found shelter in a rather smaller company and not in Thiel's listed company Palantir Technologies: corruption investigations. There is still no verdict, not even an indictment, but Kurz's legacy as Chancellor weighs heavily on the surviving People's Party: Not only is an investigation against Kurz, but also against several of his former closest colleagues and companions, but above all against Thomas Schmid, the former head of cabinet and general secretary in the Treasury. Schmid's notorious talkativeness, documented in thousands upon thousands of chat messages on his cell phone and evaluated by the corruption prosecutor, finally brought the turquoise house of cards to collapse.
In short, the new ÖVP boss and Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer know: Due to the sheer amount of data, not all chats have yet been evaluated.
There's something else to come.
We'll stay tuned anyway.
Stories we recommend you today:
The philosophy of Peter Thiel, Sebastian Kurz's new boss
"That's crazy!": What happened in the Ministry of Finance around the Wolf case
How uncontrollable auditors of the ÖVP thwarted the bill
Thank you very much for your attention, greetings and a happy, successful new year with as little corona content as possible!
Yours Michael Völker, Head of the Domestic Department THE STANDARD
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