Far-right Leader in Expenses Row

Austria's far-right leader, Jörg Haider, was at the centre of a financial row yesterday after disclosures about the lifestyle he led at taxpayers' expense.

The accounts of the Freedom party, which he founded and turned into a vehicle for his career but abandoned earlier this year, appear to show that he used public money to hire private jets on a weekly basis, amass large bills on electioneering and run up expenses more than double that of the party's four top officials combined.

Political parties in Austria are funded almost entirely from public money.

A Vienna online news magazine, profil, obtained the Freedom party's accounts for the years since 1999, when Mr Haider led the party to win 27% of the national vote, making him the most formidable far-right leader in Europe.

The news magazine said the former Freedom party leader used a private jet on a weekly basis to commute between Vienna and his power base in southern Austria at 15 times the cost of a regular flight.

Under international pressure in 2000, Mr Haider surrendered his leadership of the party to a then close aide, Susanne Riess-Passer, who became Austria's vice-chancellor, or deputy head of the government.

She is currently fighting claims, vehemently denied, that as party leader she obtained more than €350,000 (£230,000) in unauthorised expenses.

In the next two years as an "ordinary" party member, Mr Haider's expenses were more than twice those run up by Ms Riess-Passer and the party's three other leading officials combined, profil alleged.

It claimed that Ms Riess-Passer, who is now a banker, spent some €11,000 in a boutique during two shopping trips in 2001 and 2002.

She denies all wrongdoing and says her wardrobe is a private matter, and that she has always paid for it herself.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing or corrupt practices in the profil disclosures. Mr Haider is privately wealthy. The use of taxpayers' money by the Freedom party bigwigs, however, dents his popular image as a champion of ordinary people.

His allies in the Austrian province of Carinthia, where he is prime minister, yesterday dismissed the allegations as mudslinging by his embittered political enemies.