OMV: surveillance of civil society and activists

Environmental protection organizations sharply criticize the cooperation of the oil company under Rainer Seele with espionage professionals and demand complete transparency and clarification

After one Report of the magazine “Dossier” Fridays For Future Austria and Greenpeace warn urgently against the increasingly sprawling, systematic surveillance of civil society by the oil and gas industry. Notes that were brought to the organizations raise specific questions about cooperation at home Oil and gas company OMV under General Director Rainer Seele on dubious investigative firms that have specialized in the systematic monitoring of climate protectors.

These are companies like the international espionage company “Welund”. Welund is touted internally by OMV as a “targeted activism intelligence provider”, i.e. as a specialist in monitoring activists, who provides the Group's employees with daily information on global activist events and also provides unspecified “OMV- collects specific ”information.

Welund, founded by a former British MI6 secret agent, is known for doing business with corporate fear of civil society intervention. Above all, environmental movements are staged as an “existential threat” for customers in the oil and gas sector. Greenpeace and Fridays For Future demand the immediate disclosure of all contracts with investigative firms and the release of all information collected about activists. A future-oriented reorientation of OMV can only take place by turning away from the climate-damaging oil and gas business, sham solutions such as the Borealis bad investment are no longer sufficient, the environmentalists clarify.

OMV surveillance is an attack on civil society

“For us young activists in particular, it is frightening to hear that a powerful corporation like OMV is working with shady investigative specialists, apparently to monitor the environmental movement. Companies like Welund live off of staging peaceful protests like our school strikes and young people who stand up for a good future for all of us as an existential threat and monitoring them on behalf of the oil industry ”, says Aaron Wölfling from Fridays For Future Austria, shocked about the references to the cooperation of the part-state OMV with monitoring specialists.

Against this background, Greenpeace sees a tipping point for the management level of the group and demands consequences: “It is definitely going too far when OMV hires dubious espionage companies to monitor climate protection activists. Instead of concentrating on spying on civil society, Rainer Seele should have converted OMV into a sustainable, climate-friendly group with a real strategy change. After sticking to the anachronistic oil course, the economic and ecological Borealis belly stain and now also this eyesore, one thing is clear: the era of the soul is over. We demand the overdue resignation of Rainer Seele and a complete clarification of the grievances, ”explains Alexander Egit, Managing Director of Greenpeace CEE.

OMV surveillance: clarification required

At the beginning of April, the environmental and climate protectors asked OMV boss Rainer Seele to take a position on the references to monitoring the environmental movement. The organizations required the disclosure of all contracts with investigative firms for the purpose of monitoring civil society and full transparency of the data collected. OMV did not comply with this request for full transparency, but instead sought refuge in generic compliance rules in its response letter and advocated the confidentiality of contractual relationships.

“We demand a complete clarification of the grievances. OMV must disclose all contracts with espionage companies and immediately and completely disclose all information collected about activists. The OMV must finally be brought on a sustainable course, ”demand Greenpeace and Fridays For Future Austria together. The environmentalists also appeal to the politically responsible, specifically Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler and the responsible Minister of Finance Gernot Blümel, to protect civil society from such dubious monitoring methods by state-owned corporations.

A detailed research on the monitoring of environmental activists and the current case of the cooperation between OMV and the investigative specialist Welund can be found here: http://bit.ly/GPFactsheet_Investigativfirmen