VIENNA (NYTIMES) - It seemed like a miracle. For years, Austria's conservative party had languished far behind its rivals. Then in May 2017, the polls spectacularly reversed, giving the conservatives newfound credibility that helped them convince voters that they had a real chance of winning. Five months later, in elections, they did.

The man credited with the miracle was Sebastian Kurz. Only 31, well-dressed and well-mannered, with slick hair and even slicker social media slogans, he became Austria's youngest-ever chancellor and formed a government with the far right.

Elected the same year President Donald Trump took office, Kurz was quickly seen in Europe as the poster boy of an ascendant right for a new generation, a political wunderkind who had salvaged conservatism by borrowing the far right's agenda, buffing it up and bringing it into the mainstream.

It seemed too good to be true. And, it turns out, it was.

Prosecutors now say that many polls before that election were falsified and that Kurz and a small cabal of allies with cultlike devotion to him paid off one of Austria's biggest tabloids to ensure favourable news coverage.

Once in power, prosecutors say, he institutionalised the system, using taxpayers' money to elevate the appearance of his own popularity and punish journalists and media outlets that criticised him.

"What voters saw wasn't real," said Helmut Brandstätter, a former newspaper editor turned lawmaker who was bullied by Kurz and pressured to leave his job. "It was a scheme to influence elections and undermine democracy."

"The image of the perfect politician, it was all fake," Brandstätter said. "The real Sebastian Kurz is someone far more sinister."

Kurz, who stepped down as chancellor on Oct 9, has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime, but he remains under investigation for bribery and embezzlement. His downfall has reverberated across Europe, where many of the traditional centre-right parties he once inspired are now in crisis.

In a month when journalists won a Nobel Prize for holding governments to account, Austria's scandal has put a spotlight on the conspicuously symbiotic relationship between populist, right-wing leaders and sympathetic parts of the news media.

Kurz, prosecutors say, bought off Austria's third-largest tabloid with more than 1 million euros (S$1.56 million) in bribes - disguised as classified advertising.

"Kurz has used many of the same methods as other national populists," said Natascha Strobl, the author of "Radicalised Conservatism", a book about the shift to the right of traditional conservatives.

"The corrupt collusion with friendly media and the attempt to silence critical journalists is part of the toolbox."

Prosecutors call Kurz "the central figure" in an elaborate scheme to manipulate public opinion that included several members of his inner circle, as well as two pollsters and two owners of the tabloid Österreich.

The case against him reads like a political thriller. In 104 pages, obtained by The New York Times, prosecutors meticulously document a secret plan to manipulate public opinion in order to win power and then cement their hold.

The subterranean tool of buying rigged opinion polling and media coverage is outlined in remarkable detail in chat exchanges recovered from the cellphone of one of Kurz's closest allies and friends, Thomas Schmid.

Schmid held a series of senior posts in the Finance Ministry and went hiking with Kurz. He was one of a handful of loyal supporters who called themselves the "praetorians", after the elite guard of Roman emperors.

Their devotion was seemingly absolute. "YOU ARE MY HERO!" Schmid wrote to Kurz in one of their many exchanges, and in another, "I am one of your praetorians who doesn't create problems but solves them."

The problem Kurz had in 2016 was that he was not the leader of his conservative People's party. He was foreign minister in an unpopular coalition government led by the centre-left Social Democrats. In order to become chancellor, he had to take over his own party first.

So he started scheming with the praetorians.

The plan they drew up was called "Operation Ballhausplatz" - after the chancellery's address in Vienna. One document outlined from "preparation" to "takeover" how Kurz's rival atop the conservative party could be undermined with polls saying that "everything is better" with Kurz at the helm.

"Given the reluctance inside the party, Sebastian Kurz had to pursue his plan covertly," prosecutors write, noting that the plan would "incur considerable costs, and that also made a cover-up of the financing inevitable."

Schmid, in the Finance Ministry, had access to money. He made sure Kurz's media budget in the Foreign Ministry got a significant boost, and he found ways to invoice for the covert polling that did not show up in official accounts, prosecutors say.

The mechanism he devised was simple: With Kurz's help, Schmid recruited the conservative family minister, who had previously run a polling institute.

One of her former associates with close links to the owners of Österreich was put in charge of the polling. Kurz's allies dictated the questions to ask. They then selected favourable results and often tweaked them further in support of Kurz's leadership bid. Österreich was told when and how to write them up in return for regular placements of classified ads.

There were some early hiccups.

In June 2016, when Wolfgang and Helmuth Fellner, brothers whose family owns Österreich, failed to deliver an article about a favourable poll for Kurz, Schmid went ballistic: "We are really mad!!!! Mega mad."

Over time, the system was perfected. In January 2017, Österreich published not just a poll but an interview with the pollster, Sabine Beinschab, and used one of her quotes as the headline: The conservatives would "benefit from switching to Kurz." It was a line that had been fed to her by the praetorians.

By early May, the conservative leader had resigned and Kurz was swiftly designated his successor. Almost immediately his party took off in the polls, and in the space of three weeks, catapulted Kurz into lead position.

Kurz comfortably won the election in October 2017. He had run his campaign on immigration limits and Austrian identity, giving a youthful veneer to much of the agenda of the far right - and then inviting it into the government.

In the 17 months that followed, he turned a blind eye to the many racist and antisemitic transgressions of his coalition partners. When journalists, like Brandstätter, reported on them, they got phone calls from Kurz or a member of his expansive communications team.

"I got these calls all the time," Brandstätter recalled. "Then he called the owners and then the owners called me."

A year after Kurz took office, his newspaper leaned on Brandstätter to move out of his job and become publisher instead, a role with no editorial control. He is now a lawmaker for the libertarian Neos party.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say, Schmid continued to pay for polls and placed government ads with Österreich in return for favorable coverage. From mid-2016 until the first quarter of 2018, prosecutors said, the value of those ads came to at least 1.1 million euros, or about US$1.3 million.

Then in May 2019, one of Austria's biggest postwar scandals broke. An old video surfaced showing the most senior minister of the far-right Freedom Party in Kurz's coalition promising government contracts to a would-be Russian investor in return for securing favorable coverage in a well-known Austrian tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung.

It turned out to be a setup. But the video made plain what the far right was prepared to do. What Austrians did not know was that their conservative chancellor was actually doing it.

The investigation into the video would eventually put prosecutors on the trail of Kurz and his praetorians.

After the video scandal blew up, Kurz swiftly ended his coalition with the far right.

Kurz won reelection and this time entered a coalition with the progressive Greens, a change that offered him the chance to take out the stain of his association with the far right.

What did not change, however, was Kurz's elaborate system of message control.

Last June, after the Austrian magazine News wrote a critical article about Kurz's conservatives, the Finance Ministry canceled all of its classified ads - not just in News, but across all 15 titles owned by the VGN publishing group.

Kurz, who remains the conservative party leader, is still hoping to return as chancellor. He has lashed out at the justice system, accusing prosecutors of being politically motivated. Lawmakers loyal to him speak of "red cells" and "leftist networks," a sort of "deep state" fighting conservatism.

"It's straight out of the illiberal playbook," said Peter Pilz, the author of "The Kurz Regime", a recently published book. "He is badly damaged and unlikely to recover. But if he does, we should all worry."