Corruption allegations reported in the Austrian press can be grouped into two categories. First, there is a broad suspicion that the former finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), and other decision-makers had benefited their political allies by extracting offset commitments from the competition's winner. Before entering government in 2000, Grasser was an employee of the Magna Group, a parts supplier to EADS-investor DaimlerChrysler. Magna, founded by the Austrian-émigré Frank Stronach, was tipped to benefit from conditions in the acquisition tender which required the aircraft supplier to arrange investment or supply contracts - known as offsets - worth EUR 4 billion with local firms.In March 2017, at least one Magna official, former manager Hubert Hödl, was under investigation for potential money laundering charges associated with the offset schemes. In 2023, Hödl along with former Magna CEO Siegfried Wolf was charged with money laundering and other charges in Austria. Other suspicious offset deals include an EADS investment into a Carinthian technology park and a canceled plan for the aircraft firm to invest in the redevelopment of the retired Spielberg racing track. Frank Stronach, founder of Magna International, campaigning for his political party in Innsbruck, Austria, in April 2013. Second, leaks from Austrian and Bavarian criminal investigations and investigations by anti-corruption activists such as former-Green party parliamentarian Peter Pilz, also reported in the Austrian press, have cast light on more specific allegations of direct bribery by EADS in relation to the aircraft tender. The primary agent identified in these reports is Erhard Steininger, a Vienna-based lobbyist for EADS, who gave a loan of EUR 87,600 to the wife of Austrian Air Force Major General Erich Wolf and administered a EUR 6 million contract to the advertising firm of Gernot and Erika Rumpold, allies of FPÖ chief Jörg Haider. Documents seized from EADS offices in Bavaria also suggest that the company had implausibly high visibility into the decision-making process for the tender. In subsequent years, further leaks and court proceedings added to the base of allegations against EADS and the Austrian government. The Austrian intermediary Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, a key suspect in a separate bribery investigation involving the sale of Saab's Gripen to the Czech Republic and Hungary, was reportedly commissioned by BAE, Saab's marketing partner, to secure the Austrian tender for the Gripen as well. However, Mensdorff-Pouilly later acted as an intermediary for certain EADS payments marked as offset investments which ended up, via offshore accounts, in unknown hands. In 2011, another EADS associate, Gianfranco Lande, was tried and sentenced to seven years in prison by the Italian courts for operating a Ponzi-scheme targeted at wealthy families and celebrities. In the course of the trial, Lande's role as the manager of Vector Aerospace, an entity created by EADS to promote offsets for the Austrian deal, was widely publicized in the Italian press. According to Italian investigators, Lande received EUR 84 million from EADS to secure commitments from Italian firms to invest in Austria that EADS could credit towards its offset obligations. Lande claimed that some of that money was used to pay investors in his Ponzi-scheme, but investigators in Munich were later reported to be building a case that the Vector money was used as a general bribe-fund. In November 2012, officials from the Munich public prosecutor's office raided EADS buildings in Germany. German magazine Spiegel reported that month up to EUR 113.5 million had been distributed by EADS through Vector into a range of letter-box firms, some created using stolen identities. The annual reports to EADS from one such letter-box firm, the London-based City Chambers, indicate that the firm organized meetings in Vienna in 2002 and 2003 with Austrian military officials and cabinet ministers (logged under pseudonyms), including possibly Schüssel, Haider, and Grasser. For this service, City Chambers was paid EUR 8 million between 2003 and 2009.