The paper was quoted last week, but full publication still had to be clarified under media law. The approximately 230-page report has been partially blacked out on the grounds of privacy protection.
Most of the blackouts in the report had already been made by the commission headed by Martin Kreutner itself, and more were added after a thorough examination by the Ministry of Justice. For example, a passage dealing with the death of the former department head was blacked out. Others concern interventions by former ministers and the length of the proceedings. Judicial files on specific cases were extensively blacked out.
The report essentially explains what Kreutner had already presented in his presentation last week. Among the cases affected by extensive blacking out are some of the cases in which “there are significant indications that the prescribed rules were not complied with in the course of investigations against high-ranking members of the judiciary.” The report identifies a breach of the rules in the fact that Pilnacek had held confidential discussions with accused persons and their defense attorneys, for example with two CASAG supervisory board members or with “a supporter of two accused persons in the advertising affair,” for which there was no legal basis. It was also found – for example in the Chalet N case – that defense attorneys turned directly to the public prosecutor’s office with petitions, even though the public prosecutor’s office (OStA) had not taken over the investigation.
Subplot of the Telekom case
After receiving several tips, the commission also turned its attention to a sub-section of the Telekom case. “The case clearly shows how, in a closed system, despite the police having identified significant suspicions against a high-ranking representative of the judiciary, no further investigation is carried out, but the proceedings are closed as quietly as possible.” However, details of this have been blacked out. In the commission’s opinion, this shows a “worrying basic understanding of how to deal with apparent bias by leading representatives of the public prosecutor’s office.”
The original report is around 230 pages long, and the investigation period was from January 1, 2010 to December 14, 2023. The commission, which was set up in December of last year, investigated for six months. It also contains a number of recommendations. In addition to the establishment of a public prosecutor’s office and the “abolition of the two-tier justice system”, the commission recommends, among other things, “making the WKStA (Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office) non-litigious and strengthening it while simultaneously removing the ‘federal bottleneck’ of the Vienna Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office as an authority” (this is currently the WKStA’s superior authority, note). All public prosecutors are also to be invited to make a public statement regarding “(necessary) distance from politics and equidistance from individual political parties” and the media.
“Clamorose cases”
Another demand is to limit the prosecutor’s appeal process to two instances, while at the same time strengthening judicial control and reducing the reporting system. This is particularly important in so-called “clamorous cases” that currently have to be examined by numerous people in the Attorney General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice.
The reason for the commission’s establishment was the emergence of a recording in which Pilnacek had said during an evening gathering with friends in a pub that the ÖVP had unsuccessfully demanded that investigations be stopped and house searches stopped. In its report on the years 2010 to 2023, the commission found, among other things, evidence of a “two-tier justice system,” according to Kreutner.
The fact that the full report was not presented immediately had sparked criticism from the opposition. The document has now been posted online on the Justice Ministry’s website.
