While at the time praised by many for, in Grasser's words "consolidating Austria's budget",[1] he has since then been known for his involvement in major corruption scandals.

He soon joined the far right nationalist Austrian Freedom Party and became the second deputy governor of Carinthia in 1994, but after a dispute with his mentor, Jörg Haider, he left politics to work for Magna Europe as a vice president for human resources and public relations.

During the early year of his tenure as Finance Minister, he was generally perceived as the young and competent figure needed to shake up the traditional ways of the ruling parties that were becoming increasingly unpopular.

After Green MP Gabriela Moser and Falter published transcripts of police recordings of Grasser's telephone conversations with one of his friends, Walter Meischberger, in which Meischberger could not describe the services for which he was paid hundreds of thousands of euros by the Porr construction company,[6] the phrase "Was war meine Leistung?"

Grasser said that the money was given to him, in cash, by his future mother in law, heiress to the Swarovski Crystal company, a claim she denies.

Delivering messages via his attorney to the Austrian media, Grasser describes the case as a "politically motivated act".

Gernot Rumpold, Grasser's friend and Freedom party associate, was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for embezzlement charges (the ruling can still be appealed).

[10] The Austrian monthly magazine Format, cites police investigation reports that links Grasser not just to the 500,000 Euros he confessed to bringing, in a suitcase, across the border to Liechtenstein during his tenure as Austrian Federal Minister of Finance, but to a total of 1.6 million Euro that were found in offshore bank accounts (allegedly, as Grasser claims, to make an investment "for his mother-in-law").

[12] The irregularities and sums involved, the fact that substantial sums were directed—always via offshore and Liechtenstein bank accounts or in suitcases—in highly complex investment constructions linked to dummy companies seems to point towards a mesh of corruption and embezzling that might become one of the biggest personal corruption scheme in post-WWII Austria.

[18][19] He was considering a position in investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney, of Citigroup,[20][21] But instead engaged in a number of small-scale lobbying and investment firms, most of which were short-lived, including Meinl International Power, Valora Solutions, SMW OG, and a real estate company GPS.