16 Facts About Alfred Gusenbauer

Alfred Gusenbauer headed the SPO from 2000 to 2008, and served as Chancellor of Austria from January 2007 to December 2008.

Alfred Gusenbauer was educated at a high school in Wieselburg and studied political science, philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Vienna, where he obtained a doctorate in political science in 1987.

Alfred Gusenbauer was federal leader of the SPO youth wing, the Socialist Youth from 1984 to 1990; vice-president of the International Union of Socialist Youth from 1985 to 1989 and vice-president of the Socialist International in 1989.

Alfred Gusenbauer was then made a senior research fellow in the economic policy department of the Lower Austria section of the Chamber of Labour from 1990 to 1999.

In 1991, Alfred Gusenbauer was elected SPO chairman in Ybbs an der Donau and a member of the Lower Austria party executive following the resignation of SPO chairman Viktor Klima.

Alfred Gusenbauer was a member of the Austrian delegation to the parliamentary meeting of the Council of Europe in 1991 and was chairman of the social committee of the Council of Europe from 1995 to 1998.

Alfred Gusenbauer had campaigned on a platform of more social spending and certain tax cuts.

The SPO as a party was not involved in the fraud but Alfred Gusenbauer found it politically expedient to exclude OGB leaders from the lists of SPO candidates, drawing criticism from the OGB.

In July 2007, Gusenbauer led the Austrian delegation to the 119th session of the International Olympic Committee in Guatemala City to present the proposal for Salzburg as host of the 2014 Winter Olympics; the proposal eventually lost against Sochi, whose bid was presented by President Vladimir V Putin of Russia.

Alfred Gusenbauer immediately drew criticism because he abandoned central promises of the SPO election campaign, such as those to abolish university tuition fees and to reverse the country's Eurofighter deal.

On 16 June 2008, Alfred Gusenbauer was replaced as SPO chief by his minister of transport Werner Faymann.

Alfred Gusenbauer briefly returned to his old post in the Chamber of Labour but immediately took on paid and unpaid positions in the private and non-profit sectors.

Alfred Gusenbauer was made a member of the supervisory board of Alpine Holding, an Austrian construction conglomerate, in July 2009 and resigned from this position effective 1 May 2010, when it was announced that Alfred Gusenbauer was to head the supervisory board of Strabag on 18 June 2010.

In 2018, reports surfaced claiming that Alfred Gusenbauer had met with members of Congress in Washington as part of a 2013 lobbying campaign orchestrated by Paul Manafort on behalf of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

From 2009 to 2011, Alfred Gusenbauer was the first Leitner Global Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York.

The 2018 February 16 indictment of Paul Manafort unsealed on 23 February as part of the Mueller special counsel investigation alleges that foreign politicians hypothesized to be Romano Prodi and Alfred Gusenbauer took payments exceeding $2m from Manafort to promote the case of his client, then-president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich.