Schallenberg replaces Kurz as Austria’s new chancellor

Austria's Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has been sworn the country's new chancellor following the resignation of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz amid claims of corruption.

Sebastian Kurz, a 35-year-old once feted as a "whizz kid", said late on Saturday he was quitting the top job after being implicated in a corruption scandal.

Schallenberg, 52, was sworn in by President Alexander Van der Bellen shortly after 1100 GMT on Monday.

Van der Bellen said the government now had the "great responsibility of restoring trust".

Kurz's centre-right Peop le's Party (OeVP) and their junior Green coalition partners are hoping to move on from the scandal and serve out the rest of their term until 2024.

However, the fallout from last week's events may continue to reverberate.

On Wednesday, prosecutors raided several OeVP-linked locations, including the chancellery and party headquarters, over allegations that between 2016 and 2018 finance ministry resources were used to pay for "partially manipulated opinion polls that served an exclusively party-political interest".

Prosecutors allege that payments were made to a newspaper in return for publishing these surveys. 

The offices of the Oesterreich tabloid were also raided on Wednesday as part of the probe.

The offences were allegedly committed to help Kurz, already a government minister at the beginning of the period in question, take over the leadership of the OeVP.

READ MORE: Austria's Kurz steps down as chancellor amid graft claims