Trentasei anni. Tanto rischia di trascorrere dal primo mattone del tunnel del Brennero al giorno in cui sarà a pieno servizio. Insomma, quando la talpa è entrata nella montagna a guidare gli Usa c’era George W. Bush e il papa era Benedetto XVI. Quando uscirà gli uomini forse si sposteranno con le astronavi.
Senza dire dei costi. L’ultimo annuncio è appena arrivato: siamo saliti a 11,7 miliardi, rispetto all’ultima stima di 10,5, mentre la scadenza prevista per il 2032 è slittata ancora una volta. Ora si parla del 2034. Ma ormai nessuno quasi ci fa più caso.
Ma dietro alla costruzione del tunnel, sottoterra come la talpa, cova uno scontro tra Italia e Austria sul lievitare dei costi. Sorpresa: questa volta sono gli italiani quelli che accusano i colleghi di Vienna di aver fatto esplodere i conti. Con ormai oltre 3 miliardi di extracosti.
Il punto è che questa grande opera sarà finanziata da Unione Europea, più, appunto, Austria e Italia. In soldoni: l’Ue ci mette la metà, mentre il restante va diviso tra i due paesi confinanti che ospitano l’opera. E qui vengono le note dolenti. “Le spese folli dell’Austria – racconta una fonte interna – ci ricadranno sul groppone. Come se due amici vanno a cena, uno prende caviale e l’altro insalata, ma poi si paga alla romana, metà ciascuno”.
Ma facciamo qualche passo indietro: l’idea di una linea che collega in galleria Innsbruck a Fortezza (Bolzano) nasce poco dopo il 1990. Sarà una meraviglia della tecnologia , si dice, con 64 km tra opere accessorie tunnel di 58 km.
L’avvio dei lavori arriva nel 2007. E qui merita fare un piccolo excursus sul balletto degli annunci sull’ultimazione dei lavori: prima si ipotizza addirittura il 2016, poi si parla del 2026, quindi si rinvia al 2032. Adesso si ammette che si dovrà attendere almeno il 2034 e se qualche ingegnere a denti stretti dice che forse è una scadenza ottimistica. Il paradosso è che la galleria dove dovrebbero transitare i treni è già quasi scavata per intero. Ma, anche confrontandosi con le esperienze del San Gottardo appena costruito in Svizzera, ci si è resi conto che si doveva trasformare il cunicolo esplorativo (accanto alla canna principale) in un tunnel di servizio. Un lavoro enorme. Risultato: la progettazione va avanti da anni e siamo ancora in alto mare. Da qui l’ennesimo ritardo. Appuntamento quindi al 2034. E sarebbero comunque già 27 anni dopo l’inizio dei lavori.
Ma l’amara sorpresa è un’altra: il tunnel del Brennero ha senso perché, appena superati i rilievi, si riunisce con la nuova linea che arriverà in Germania. È il famoso corridoio Verona-Monaco di Baviera. Peccato che, come hanno riportato giornali tedeschi e austriaci, il governo tedesco sia intenzionato a togliere il collegamento da Monaco dalle priorità da finanziare. Risultato: ammesso che l’opera sia inserita di nuovo tra i progetti su cui la Germania vuole investire, prima che sia ultimata la progettazione si dovrà attendere il 2034 per vedere partire i lavori. E saranno ultimati, si dice a Berlino, non prima del 2043. Quindi la nuova linea nel suo complesso rischia di essere inaugurata la bellezza di 37 anni dopo il suo avvio. Perché senza il tratto tedesco il tunnel del Brennero è quasi inutile.
C’è poi, si diceva il balletto dei costi: si era cominciato parlando di 4 miliardi, rapidamente diventati più di 5. Ma appena le ruspe avevano cominciato a scavare più realisticamente erano diventati oltre 8. Fino a una settimana fa l’ultima stima era 10,5. Adesso si ammette che saranno almeno 11,7, ma è lecito immaginare che da qui al completamento dei lavori ci saranno altri consistenti ritocchi.
E qui la disputa da ingegneristica diventa politica. Qualche anno fa si rischiò un incidente diplomatico quando Raffaele Zurlo, l’ingegnere che si occupava dell’Opera sul versante italiano, accusò apertamente i colleghi austriaci di aver fatto esplodere i costi. Il solo tratto vicino a Tulfes, dicono fonti interne, sarebbe passato da 377 milioni a quasi un miliardo. Le accuse molto circostanziate di Zurlo diedero vita anche a un’inchiesta della Procura di Bolzano che alla fine decise di passare il fascicolo, per competenza, all’Europa e infine all’Austria. La questione si chiuse con un non luogo a procedere che lasciò l’amaro in bocca al di qua del tunnel.
I manager italiani e austriaci furono sostituiti. Ma non è solo una questione di ruspe ma anche di politica. La figura chiave sul versante austriaco e altoatesino è stato a lungo Konrad Bergmeister. Parliamo di un noto e stimato ingegnere bolzanino molto vicino alla Svp, la Sudtiroler Volkspartei, il partito che da decenni domina la politica e il potere altoatesini. Bergmeister era stato indicato in passato come è possibile guida della Svp. Di sicuro a Bolzano ha occupato poltrone di ogni genere: oltre, appunto, ad aver diretto uno studio ingegneristico responsabile di decine di progetti in Alto, è stato presidente della fondazione della Cassa di risparmio di Bolzano, presidente della Libera Università di Bolzano, presidente del Consiglio di amministrazione del conservatorio cittadino, e ha ricoperto importanti incarichi nella società dell’autostrada del Brennero, nonché, si è detto, è stato alla guida della parte austriaca della Bbt fino al 2019. Dalla musica alle autostrade passando per le ferrovie e le banche. Tutto insomma. Si era addirittura guadagnato una canzone rap dell’artista Markus Dorfmann che metteva in musica i suoi mille incarichi.
Ma Bergmeister oggi pare essere molto considerato anche dalla Lega del ministro delle infrastrutture Matteo Salvini, tant’è che dal 2023 siede nella struttura potentissima struttura tecnica di missione del Ministero che si pronuncia appunto sulle grandi opere. Non solo: nel 2020 la Regione Veneto (Lega) gli aveva affidato un incarico di consulenza per la Pedemontana Veneta (per quella Lombarda il suo studio aveva partecipato come progettista di una delle opere)
Così la talpa continua a scavare sotto il Brennero. Quando uscirà finalmente dal tunnel troverà un mondo completamente diverso da quello che esisteva all’inizio dei cantieri. L’unica cosa che non cambia mai è Bergmeister.
Austria has ordered four Russian diplomats to leave the country over suspected espionage, declaring them persona non grata following findings by Austrian security authorities, Austrian media outlet Heute reported on 23 October.
The expulsions come as European countries step up efforts to counter suspected Russian intelligence operations amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Three of the diplomats worked at the Russian Embassy in Vienna, while the fourth served in Russia’s delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is headquartered in Vienna.
Austria’s Foreign Ministry said the four had engaged in “activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,” a term usually used for spying, Reuters reported. It did not disclose details of the alleged activities or the intelligence findings behind the decision.
The three embassy diplomats were declared persona non grata under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The fourth, who worked on military security and arms control at Russia’s OSCE delegation, was also ordered to leave Austria.
Vienna remains a hub for Russian intelligence
The latest expulsions bring the number of Russian diplomats Austria has expelled since 2020 to 18, according to Reuters. In May 2026, Austria expelled three Russian Embassy employees suspected of using antennas on diplomatic buildings to intercept satellite internet data transmitted by international organizations based in Vienna.
Vienna’s concentration of international organizations, including the OSCE and United Nations agencies, has made it a key location for intelligence activity. A 2024 report by The Wall Street Journal, described Vienna as a major Russian spy hub for operations targeting Western countries, including surveillance of arms supplies to Ukraine.
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WSJ: Vienna has become major Russian spy hub for anti-Western operations in Europe
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Lyubinsky said Moscow’s response to the expulsions was unavoidable, according to Russian state news agency TASS, AP reported.
Three members of the Russian Embassy, as well as a Russian delegate at the OSCE responsible for military security and arms control, "carried out activities incompatible with their diplomatic status," Austria's Foreign Ministry said.
As autoridades francesas dizem não ter identificado risco para a população em geral e classificam o caso como excecional. O vírus já foi detetado em Portugal em animais, mas não há casos humanos no nosso país. França anunciou esta quinta-feira o primeiro caso humano conhecido de infeção pelo vírus Shamonda, um agente que até agora só se conhecia em animais. Segundo o ECDC, o doente, gravemente imunodeprimido e em tratamento de uma doença grave na zona de Lyon, morreu no início de outubro. As autoridades francesas dizem não ter identificado risco para a população em geral e classificam o caso
France, Germany, Austria and Poland are expanding or reviewing the authority of critical infrastructure operators to defend facilities against drones, raising legal and operational questions over the growing role of civilian companies in national security.
European governments are reconsidering who should be authorised to intercept hostile drones as energy companies and critical infrastructure operators confront an increasingly serious threat to electricity networks, transport systems and other essential facilities.
France has already introduced legislation permitting approved operators to deploy counter-drone systems, while Germany is reviewing similar arrangements and Austria has announced plans to extend certain protective powers to infrastructure companies.
Poland has moved further by authorising designated security units to disable or destroy drones entering restricted areas around important energy installations.
The changes reflect concerns that national police and armed forces cannot provide permanent protection for every substation, power station, railway facility or pipeline against relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft.
France establishes a new approach
In August 2026, the French parliament approved legislation allowing authorised operators of critical infrastructure and their contractors to detect, jam and intercept drones near designated facilities.
The legislation followed a series of reported drone incursions over sensitive locations, including military installations.
Under the French approach, operators of strategically important infrastructure may eventually use approved counter-drone systems without relying exclusively on the immediate intervention of military personnel.
Potential beneficiaries include electricity operators and organisations responsible for transport infrastructure.
French authorities are testing detection equipment, electronic countermeasures and interceptor drones at Brétigny-sur-Orge, south of Paris.
The programme examines systems capable of identifying approaching aircraft, determining whether they present a threat and initiating an appropriate response.
France intends to expand the protection of sites classified as strategically important, with further deployment planned during 2027.
The initiative would introduce responsibilities traditionally associated with military or police operations into the management of civilian infrastructure.
Germany and Austria reconsider existing restrictions
Germany is examining the legal conditions under which private companies and infrastructure operators could participate in active counter-drone operations.
At present, responsibility for neutralising threatening aircraft remains primarily with the competent public authorities.
The debate has intensified following security incidents involving unmanned aircraft, including the discovery of an explosives-laden drone near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig/Halle airport in August.
German authorities attributed the incident to Russia, an allegation Moscow denied.
The German government’s review concerns not only the equipment that companies may possess but also whether trained security personnel should be permitted to deploy countermeasures without waiting for a separate police authorisation.
Austria announced plans in September to extend comparable powers to selected critical infrastructure operators, including major energy companies.
The government has acknowledged the practical limitations of protecting a large number of widely dispersed installations using state security personnel alone.
Poland has already established restricted drone zones around sensitive energy facilities, with designated security units authorised to intercept aircraft entering those areas under applicable national rules.
Electricity networks face particular risks
Electricity infrastructure presents a difficult security problem because essential installations are distributed across extensive geographical areas.
Transmission operators manage thousands of kilometres of high-voltage lines, while substations, transformers and switching stations connect generation facilities to consumers.
A successful attack against critical equipment can produce consequences extending well beyond the immediate site.
Large power transformers are particularly difficult to replace. Manufacturing, transporting and installing specialised equipment can require lengthy preparation, making rapid recovery uncertain after serious damage.
European utilities have traditionally concentrated on physical security, maintenance and restoring services after technical failures or accidents.
The spread of drones creates additional demands for surveillance, early warning and the ability to respond before an attack reaches its target.
Russia’s repeated strikes against Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure have demonstrated the extensive disruption that attacks on power systems can cause.
European governments are now evaluating how comparable vulnerabilities could be exploited against their own networks.
Electronic jamming can interfere with communications and navigation systems beyond the targeted aircraft. A drone brought down over an industrial or residential area could injure members of the public or damage surrounding property.
Security personnel must also determine whether an unidentified drone is hostile, operating unlawfully or simply present because of an error by its operator.
A mistaken interception could expose infrastructure companies to compensation claims and other legal consequences.
European governments must therefore establish who can authorise an intervention, which countermeasures are permitted and how responsibility is allocated when damage occurs.
There is no uniform European approach.
Some operators support expanding their protective powers, while others argue that the use of force should remain the responsibility of the state.
Finland’s national electricity transmission operator, Fingrid, has expressed reservations about transferring such authority to energy companies.
The position reflects a wider concern that infrastructure operators should concentrate on maintaining essential services rather than assuming responsibilities for armed or coercive security operations.
A growing European security market
The regulatory debate is developing alongside a rapidly expanding market for counter-drone technology.
Manufacturers are offering equipment that integrates radar, optical sensors, electronic detection and software capable of classifying possible threats.
Interceptor drones and electronic countermeasures are increasingly being designed for use around civilian infrastructure rather than exclusively on military installations.
German defence company Rheinmetall has reported growing interest from private infrastructure operators in counter-drone protection.
However, the technology is advancing faster than the legal frameworks governing its use.
The immediate challenge for European governments is to establish protective arrangements that allow rapid intervention while preserving clear accountability.
A counter-drone system can identify an approaching aircraft within seconds. Determining who is authorised to stop it remains a matter for national law.
Spar pilot scheme will test whether heirloom fruit can thrive in today’s commercial and environmental conditions
Only about 10 of the 2,000 types of apples growing in Austria can be found in supermarkets among the polished, pristine fruit usually on display – a sad ratio according to fans of historic varieties being primed for a comeback.
One of the country’s biggest retail chains has embarked on a pilot rollout of unusual and long-forgotten apples enjoyed in previous centuries, riding an international trend of reviving heirloom fruit and vegetables.
Austrian police are searching for a suspect who is accused of raping an 85-year-old woman who was walking home from Vienna’s main train station, with authorities releasing a photo of the suspect to aid in their search.
The assault occurred around 1:30 to 1:35 a.m. Tuesday on Arsenalstrasse in Vienna’s Favoriten district, police said. The elderly woman was on her way home from Vienna Central Station when an unknown man pulled her into the courtyard of a residential building and raped her, according to the Vienna State Criminal Police Office.
Passersby heard her cries for help and saw a man flee on foot, a Vienna police spokesperson told t-online.
“Passersby were able to hear the victim’s cries for help and observed a male person fleeing the scene on foot,” the spokesperson said.
The injured woman was taken to a hospital by Vienna emergency services. Investigators secured evidence at the scene. An immediate police search did not locate the suspect.
Police published a photo of the man hours after the attack on the order of the Vienna public prosecutor’s office. A police spokesperson told t-online that the early release followed consultation between the state criminal office and prosecutors “in order to achieve the arrest of the fugitive suspect as quickly as possible as an additional investigative measure.”
By Wednesday morning, “several quite concrete tips” had already reached investigators, police spokesman Philipp Haßlinger told Die Presse and ORF. “The investigations are fully underway,” he said. The tips are being handled by the Vienna State Criminal Police Office’s southern branch.
Police continue to seek witnesses. No name, age or other identifying details of the suspect have been released.
There have been a number of horrifying rapes of elderly women by foreigners in recent years, including a case from last year where an 82-year-old Viennese woman was allegedly raped by her own care nurse, an Afghan national. She has since lost her will to live after the traumatizing experience, according to a lawyer representing the woman in court. The son in the case had to endure watching his mother being raped in realtime on his cellphone after he placed cameras in her apartment.
En los años setenta, el pequeño núcleo de Stein, en la Baja Austria, estuvo a punto de convertirse en el emplazamiento de la segunda central nuclear del país. El proyecto se abandonó y el lugar quedó como una franja más de tierra de labor junto al Danubio. Medio siglo después, esos mismos campos han revelado […]
In the 1970s, the small settlement of Stein, in Lower Austria, came close to becoming the site of the country’s second nuclear power plant. The project was scrapped, and the land went back to being another stretch of farmland beside the Danube. Half a century later, those same fields have revealed what they’d been hiding […]
In the spring of 2019, workers dredging gravel at Deinham, a site on the Danube in Upper Austria, kept snagging strange double-pointed iron objects in the excavator’s bucket. Instead of tossing them into the scrap pile — the usual fate of corroded iron pulled from riverbeds, since it rarely looks as recognizable as bronze — […]
En la primavera de 2019, unos trabajadores que extraían grava en Deinham, en el municipio de Hartkirchen an der Donau (Alta Austria), notaron que la excavadora sacaba numerosos objetos de hierro de doble punta. En lugar de desecharlos, avisaron a la Oficina Federal de Monumentos. Aquel gesto permitió recuperar el mayor conjunto de barras de […]
Austria’s new nationwide ban on “traditional Muslim” head coverings, including hijabs and burqas, for girls under 14 in both public and private schools, has now taken effect as of Sept. 7, 2026. in Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland. The start date coincided with the start of the new school year. Austria’s remaining states will follow with a ban next week as well.
The measure, framed by the government as a child-protection and gender-equality policy, immediately faced visible resistance from Muslims and the first formal legal challenge.
At an Islamic primary school in Vienna, reporters from Austrian news outlet Heute observed young girls arriving to school still wearing headscarves accompanied by their mothers. One child wore a pink hijab coordinated with her dress; two slightly older students entered in simple hijabs without parents. School officials did not immediately clarify how they would apply the ban on private Islamic institutions.
The law requires schools to start with conversations involving the student and her legal guardians. Repeated violations trigger involvement of child-protection services, with fines of €150 to €800 possible for parents as a last resort. Teachers, already under strain, must initiate these talks. There are now fears of real conflict arising in the coming months.
Integration Minister Claudia Bauer of the conservative ÖVP described the headscarf as “a sign of oppression and a means of controlling girls from the earliest childhood.” Chancellor Christian Stocker has separately called for a constitutional ban on political Islam, saying he does not “want to live in an Islamic state.”
The right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the most popular party in the country is known for its even harsher stance toward migrants and Islam in the country. FPÖ politician Ricarda Berger stated there is “no place for political Islam in Austria, and certainly not in our schools.”
The party wants a general ban on all headscarves and face coverings in schools for both students and teachers alike, which would cover all ages.
Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr of the liberal NEOS acknowledged uncertainty about the law’s fate at the Constitutional Court, stating: “You can never be completely certain.”
He added that the government and education ministry “carried out very intensive consultations” to draft a constitutionally compliant text.
Only the Greens opposed the bill in parliament. Green politician Sigi Maurer accused Wiederkehr of “creating new conflicts and offloading them onto the teachers,” saying the minister wanted to “foist the role of police officers onto them.”
Teachers’ union chairman Paul Kimberger noted that some communities had already announced they would resist and that certain conversations with parents “will probably have limited success.”
The Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ), the largest Islamic organization in the country, condemned the ban as discriminatory. Spokesperson Carla Amina Baghajati said, “We believe it unjustifiably restricts the fundamental right to freedom of religion and disproportionately affects Muslim girls. Rather than protecting children, it singles out a specific religious practice and risks excluding the very children it claims to support.”
The IGGÖ has pledged to support families challenging the law at the Constitutional Court. A request for annulment was filed on the first day of school.
A 2020 Constitutional Court ruling had struck down an earlier ban limited to children under 10, finding it violated Austria’s duty of religious neutrality. The court dismissed premature challenges to the new law in July because it had not yet entered force, but that procedural barrier is now gone. Left-wing student groups have called for protests. An 11-year-old girl demonstrated against the ban in February carrying a banner that, translated into English, read, “My headscarf, my decision.”
The Constitutional Court is likely to have the final word on the issue.
'It is with great shock and deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of our Miss Austria 2024, Lucia Sisic,' Mission Austria announced on its official Facebook page.
'It is with great shock and deep sadness that we have learned of the passing of our Miss Austria 2024, Lucia Sisic,' Mission Austria announced on its official Facebook page.
On the evening of December 22, 2013, an armored van packed with cash made its rounds through the regal streets of Vienna. The city’s elegant Baroque buildings were trimmed with glinting strings of lights; Christmas markets sold spiced glühwein on cobbled squares. A little after midnight, as the festivities quieted, the van, operated by the security company Loomis, stopped at a walk-up ATM on a desolate stretch of storefronts. Two guards stepped out, entered a room-size vestibule behind the machine, and commenced replenishing the ATM with cash. A minute later, two figures wearing black balaclavas and carrying handguns emerged from the shadows and followed the guards inside.
The pair ordered the guards onto the ground and handcuffed them. After snatching the keys to the armored van, one of them unlocked the vehicle and began stuffing crisp bank notes into black duffel bags. The thieves then checked the street for witnesses and disappeared into the night with nearly three million euros.
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It was the largest armed robbery in Austrian history. The heist had been near perfectly executed, revealing intimate knowledge of Loomis’s anti-theft procedures—perfect, that is, except for one small oversight. The thieves didn’t realize that the ATM had a security camera that automatically took photos of the street whenever it was being restocked. The images were blurry, but they revealed that the perpetrator who climbed into the van was short enough to stand upright without hitting their head. Detectives decided that it was almost certainly a woman.
They soon homed in on a former Loomis employee, Tamara S., who, when she worked for the company, had scheduled the routes and was only five feet three inches tall. On the morning of January 10, 2014, federal police raided Tamara’s apartment and arrested her. Initially she denied any involvement in the robbery, but eventually she confessed. Investigators were stunned when she named her accomplice. The man she claimed had masterminded the job was one of their own: Gabriel E., a former officer in the city’s WEGA unit, the Viennese equivalent of SWAT.
The next day, a team that included some of Gabriel’s former colleagues raided his upscale apartment and placed him under arrest. Unlike Tamara, Gabriel confessed right away. When detectives asked why he had committed such an audacious crime, he replied that he hadn’t stolen the money for himself. He’d done it for the children of Africa; he planned to build an orphanage there.
It sounded absurd—the kind of desperate lie a thief might invent to deflect blame or ameliorate punishment—but it was very much the truth.
“Wouldn’t it be right,” Gabriel asked, “to steal something from a bank and give it to the poor?”
Austrians have a reputation, even among themselves, as scrupulous rule followers. In Vienna it’s rare to glimpse people jaywalking, and the city’s subway runs on an honor system. An Austrian friend suggested that this predilection had its roots in the country’s imperial past. From its power center in Austria, the Hapsburg monarchy ruled enormous portions of Europe for six centuries with the help of a dizzyingly complex bureaucracy. The compulsion to follow rules even a hundred years after the Hapsburgs lost power, my friend explained, was like the twitching of empire’s phantom limb. (Austria is also a very private country; the media don’t report the full names of people involved in criminal cases, a practice I’m abiding by too.)
As a police officer, Gabriel had been an enforcer of rules in a rule-bound society, making his crime all the more perplexing. His family told me that he was staunchly law-abiding, and had never incurred so much as a speeding ticket. In retrospect, however, they realized that there had been hints of where he was headed. He always loved to give things: presents to his three children, donations to charity, food to people begging in the street. After leaving the police force and starting a private-security business, he became wealthy, only to grow conspicuously ascetic, donating increasingly large amounts of money and possessions. By the time he was arrested, he’d sold his Audi and his Rolex, and he was down to almost his last suit. When police raided his home, they found bags filled with clothes purchased from H&M that Gabriel planned to give away.
*The Atavist is using pseudonyms for Gabriel’s family members.
Gabriel’s son Florian* recalled that the summer before the Loomis heist, his father had posed a curious hypothetical. “Wouldn’t it be right,” he asked, “to steal something from a bank and give it to the poor?” Florian, who was studying to become a police officer himself, disagreed, and his father dropped the issue.
Still, to idly philosophize about such a crime was one thing. To actually do it—to fashion oneself into a twenty-first-century Robin Hood—was another.
After his arrest, Gabriel was remanded to Vienna’s largest and most forbidding jail, Josefstadt. When I visited him there in 2014, I expected to encounter someone solemn and morally serious—a grim-faced saint. But when Gabriel entered the room, he radiated the warm excitement of a Labrador retriever. A tall, fit man of 50 with fetching salt-and-pepper stubble, Gabriel was wearing a cerulean-blue hoodie, clear-plastic-rimmed glasses, and a beaded necklace. He looked less like a former law enforcement officer than a hip Los Angeles dad. We sat down, and without hesitation Gabriel, still the inveterate benefactor, offered me exactly what I wanted: an explanation of how he’d gotten into this mess.
Gabriel’s childhood, he told me, had been shaped by “gruesomeness.” He was raised in Tyrol, Austria’s bucolic eastern province, by an alcoholic father given to punching his two sons. Gabriel and his elder brother eventually came under the care of their grandmother, who as punishment would regularly lock them in a darkened closet. “I had a very fucking childhood,” he told me in emphatic, accented English, omitting an adjective but still making the point. (After our first encounter, I would meet with Gabriel several times in the ensuing decade and communicate with him by letter, phone, and email.)
The two siblings both went into law enforcement, Gabriel in Vienna, where he hoped to help others in desperate situations, and his brother in the state police. Athletic and competitive, Gabriel quickly made the famed Wiener Einsatzgruppe Alarmabteilung (WEGA), the Vienna police department’s most expertly trained unit. Despite his severe upbringing, Gabriel was by nature cheerful. Every WEGA operation, as he saw it, was a new problem to be solved through hard work and an upbeat attitude.
One afternoon in 1994, Gabriel told me, his WEGA squad was tasked with busting up a drug deal in Vienna’s Fifteenth District, which at the time was the city’s seediest neighborhood. When the team moved to make an arrest, the seller, an African immigrant, bolted. Gabriel pursued him, shouting for the man to stop and firing his pistol in the air. As he closed in, the suspect turned and pulled out his own handgun. The two men exchanged fire, hitting each other in the thigh. Gabriel tackled the dealer and, following a short, bloody wrestling match, overpowered him. The pair shared an awkward ambulance ride to the hospital.
The shooting put Gabriel’s relentless positivity to the test. He endured months of physical therapy to regain the use of his leg. When he returned to work, he transitioned out of WEGA. After a brief, unhappy stint as a traffic cop, he left the force entirely. In 2001, he started his own private-security company, specializing in investigations of corporate theft. He gave it an English name: Service of Secrecy. The early years were lean as Gabriel struggled against larger competitors, but as word of his talents spread, the business thrived.
Gabriel occasionally found himself thinking about the man who’d shot him. He saw him only one additional time, in court, and knew little of his past—not even which country he was from. But at some point, Gabriel learned that the man was an asylum-seeker, as were so many African immigrants in Austria. They’d begun arriving in the country in the 1990s, fleeing civil wars and ailing economies. Gabriel wondered what the man’s life had been like back home, what he was running from.
In 2006, Gabriel told me, he had an opportunity to visit Africa himself; a client had recommended him to authorities in the Central African nation of Gabon, which was interested in creating its own version of WEGA. He told me he flew down for an interview with the defense minister, Ali Bongo, the son of the country’s notoriously corrupt authoritarian president, Omar Bongo, and was offered a lucrative multiyear consulting contract. Gabriel didn’t love the idea of working for a despot, but he had a family to support. And at the end of the day, someone was going to train the country’s police. Why not him? Gabriel accepted the job.
He commuted between Gabon and Austria every few weeks. During his trips to Gabon, he told me, he spent much of his time touring the countryside, where Bongo wanted to establish an array of military bases. The poverty Gabriel witnessed shocked him. By African standards Gabon was wealthy, mainly due to its coastal oil reserves. In the capital, Libreville, a former French colonial port, supermarkets stocked expensive Bordeaux and Roquefort cheese. But the wealth was unequally distributed. “People lived in huts without ANYTHING,” Gabriel wrote to me in 2015. “Yet merely one hundred meters further I could see pompous buildings with inconceivable luxury.” The experience, he added, “completely overwhelmed me.”
Gabriel began to feel guilty about the money he made, which had bought him a posh apartment and car. He responded to his unease with an energetic program of handouts. Gabriel had been raised Catholic and later joined a Pentecostal church. He told me that charity was an important part of his faith. He decided to give money to destitute Gabonese. There was no formal plan; when he encountered someone in need—particularly single mothers and people requiring medical care they couldn’t afford—he gave them whatever cash he had.
Back in Vienna, Gabriel’s family was growing. Following an amicable divorce, he had remained close with his first wife, Sabine, with whom he had two children, Julia and Florian. He remarried a woman who taught French—helpful for his work in Gabon, where French is the official language—and, in 2012, she gave birth to his third child. Domestic life was good. But the feeling that plagued Gabriel abroad persisted at home. Soon he began filling the trunk of his car with clothes, toys, appliances, and other items, then driving east to Romania, where he’d stop in poor villages and give it all away. Sometimes he took his two elder children, who by then were teenagers and growing concerned about Gabriel’s haphazard giving. (So was their mother.) But the donations, and the astonished smiles of the people who received them, never failed to make Gabriel happy. It felt more than good, he told me once. Then he paused, searching for the correct English word. “It was,” he said, “mandatory. My duty. My obligation.”
In 2009, Omar Bongo died, and his son left the ministry of defense to run for president. The new defense minister, Gabriel told me, declined to renew his contract. Although the lost income was regrettable, Gabriel was by then so consumed by his mission to help Gabon’s people that he didn’t mind. While making his ad hoc contributions to everyday Gabonese, Gabriel had begun to dream of something bigger—something that, to his mind, would be truly consequential.
His difficult upbringing had made him empathetic toward children in dire circumstances, particularly those without parents. He wanted to instill in a frightened child a durable sense of safety and security—a feeling that, growing up, he had been denied. Before leaving Gabon at the end of his consultancy, Gabriel began drawing up plans to build an orphanage there. It was to be a whole complex, in fact, where every child would have their own lodgings, painted in bright colors, and where all their needs would be met. He named the imagined community Blue Sky Village.
Back in Vienna, Gabriel began soliciting donations to make Blue Sky Village a reality. He estimated that he’d need nearly a million euros to begin the project, and he wrote dozens of letters to aid organizations and philanthropists requesting help in financing the plan. Soliciting charity, Gabriel found, was much tougher than handing it out. He received few responses. The people who did reply politely suggested that, given his lack of experience in the aid space, he donate to existing groups. But investigating corporate theft hadn’t done much for his faith in how companies managed their money. What’s more, Gabriel thought that a lot of groups wasted money on lavish fundraisers—the Viennese have a long tradition of philanthropic balls—rather than spending it on people in need. He grew angry when he thought about money being used for frivolities when children were starving and scared. “This makes me so… hateful,” he told me. The only way to know that orphans in Gabon were being saved, he thought, was to save them himself.
As he struggled to get his project off the ground, Gabriel received a call from an old WEGA colleague named Heinz, who was now working in security for Loomis. The company had suffered some recent employee thefts, and Heinz wanted Gabriel to help its Austrian branch sharpen its embezzlement protocols.
In a bleak irony, Heinz had been fired from the Viennese police in 2006, after he was accused of beating a Gambian immigrant resisting deportation. Gabriel told me that he’d heard about Heinz’s case in the media. Despite what Heinz had allegedly done, Gabriel found it easy to rationalize taking the Loomis job: The more money he earned, the more he could give away to those in need. He agreed to come on as a consultant, and the two men became friendly. Soon, Heinz introduced Gabriel to a Loomis employee named Tamara.
In the middle of a parking lot in front of a supermarket in Schloßberg, in the district of Leibnitz in the Austrian state of Styria, stands a giant wooden structure that looks like a windmill. Known as a klopotec, this 19-meter tall structure with its imposing blades is a bird scarer, and is a cultural symbol of the wine growing regions of Slovenia and Styria.
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