bAt their wedding ceremony in August 2018, the then Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneisel was not only his guest of honor Vladimir Putin danced – She also received valuable earrings as a gift from the Russian president, Austrian media revealed on Thursday.
Kneissl served as Foreign Minister from December 2017 to May 2019. He invited Putin to his wedding when his country presided over the European Union. At that time pictures of him walking with Putin and cursing him went around the world. But only now it became known that the Kremlin boss, in addition to flowers and the Don Cossack choir, also brought amethyst earrings worth an estimated 50,000 euros to the bride.
Jewelry is the property of the Republic
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, Kneissl could not only afford expensive gifts; Rather, the valuables were the property of the republic. A spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry told AFP news agency on Thursday that the jewelry is now owned by the state. Accordingly, the two sides initially signed a loan agreement in November 2019, with the former minister later declaring that she could not fulfill the terms and withdrawing from the contract. She returned the earrings in February 2020.
After leaving the government, Kneissl, like former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), took a position on the supervisory board of the Russian state oil company Rosneft. Both refused to step down after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The former Austrian foreign minister has been living in France since September 2020. In response to AFP, she explained that the gifts “have been the property of the republic since August 2018, as required by law.”
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