A banking scandal spreads widely and plunges people into the abyss. And that doesn’t happen on New York’s Wall Street, but in tranquil Murbruck in Austria. The complicated crime thriller “Steirergeld” on Thursday at 8.15 p.m. in the first is about such machinations of apparently honorable citizens.
Since 2014, the successful series has been based on the “Styrian thrillers” by the successful author Claudia Rossbacher. The eighth case was again under the proven solid direction of Wolfgang Murnberger based on a screenplay written by himself and his wife Maria.
The film is characterized by Alpine local color and humorously teasing, sometimes salaciously colored dialogues between the unequal investigators. The former castle actor Hary Prinz (“Die Toten vom Bodensee”) embodies the older, melancholically sarcastic chief inspector Sascha Bergmann from the LKA of the provincial capital Graz.
The popular South Tyrolean Anna Unterberger (“Die Toten von Salzburg”) is there for the third time as his much younger, clever colleague Anni Sulmtaler. Bergmann sends her to the Viennese financial auditor Markus Tauber (Michael Menzel), who is examining the bank documents. Is the handsome man himself involved in the case? It’s a job that Anni is only too happy to take on. Which your boss doesn’t like either. He just calls Tauber “Asparagus Tarzan”.
Financial scandal and death
The crime story from the Austrian provinces begins with a dead man – and ends with two. First, the private banker Rudolf Stiegler (Gottfried Breitfuss) has to believe in it. Shortly after the inglorious end of his financial institution, the old man with heart disease is attacked in his private house in the evening. He doesn’t survive this.
He probably dies mainly because the emergency services were not called in time. Stiegler had been a generous benefactor – he sponsored the ice hockey club. As a bank manager, he had attracted more and more savers through high interest rates. Behind it, however, was a nasty Ponzi scheme that has now collapsed.
Bergmann and Sulmtaler are not just investigating the financial scandal. Added to this is the death of Stiegler. “Rudi was like a mafia boss,” says one of the many victims. The suspects include the ice hockey coach Aflenzer (Heikko Deutschmann, “Wendehammer”). There is an obvious murder happening.
