DFormer Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was sentenced to eight months in prison in Vienna on Friday for making false statements before a parliamentary investigative committee. The sentence is suspended for three years. The former head of cabinet in the Federal Chancellery, Bernhard Bonelli, who was charged with him, received a suspended sentence of six months. In addition, both have to bear the costs of the procedure. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The prosecutors had accused Kurz of having testified falsely on four points in June 2020 regarding his role in filling posts. “Rarely has a case of false testimony been as clear as this,” said a representative of the Economic and Corruption Public Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA) in the closing argument. As Chancellor, Kurz claimed de facto decision-making authority over personnel, “formally responsible bodies become mere executors”. In particular, the incriminated answers concerned the appointment of the head of the holding company Öbag in 2019 with the then Secretary General in the Ministry of Finance, Thomas Schmid, and the appointment of the Öbag supervisory board. Bonelli is also said to have lied regarding Kurz’s influence by downplaying it in his interview as a respondent in the so-called Ibiza committee of inquiry.
Kurz sees his words being reinterpreted by prosecutors
In an emotional closing statement, Kurz complained that the words he actually spoke had been reinterpreted by the public prosecutor. He assured me he wasn’t lying in court. “Believe me, I went to the U-Committee with the intention of not ending up here.” Judge Michael Radasztics, however, saw “the offense of giving false evidence” as a given. However, for both defendants, not all points of the indictment, but only a part. This is probably one of the reasons why his sentence was below the demands of the public prosecutor’s office, which had called for a suspended sentence of up to one and a half years in combination with an unconditional fine. The prosecution and defense can appeal to the Vienna Higher Regional Court
In response to questions from opposition MPs in the investigative committee, Kurz referred to the formal decision-making process, not the informal one, the prosecutors allege. “The answers that always skirt around the questions are telling.” The motive was to “avoid the impression of postal haggling,” especially towards the media.
Kurz’s defense attorney, however, called for an acquittal. Because Kurz didn’t actually make any false statements at the time. “The WKStA accuses him of its own interpretation of his statement.” However, an interpretation cannot replace facts. The lawyer referred to four specific statements that Kurz had been accused of being false by the prosecution and explained that, in his opinion, it had been confirmed in the witness interviews during the 12 days of the trial that the statements were all correct. He also pointed out that the law requires witnesses to give truthful testimony in parliamentary committees of inquiry as well as in court, but unlike there, it does not require complete testimony.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys also disagreed on the question of whether Kurz and Bonelli should be allowed to testify if necessary. This is an exception to the obligation to tell the truth provided for in Austrian law. Witnesses or informants may therefore not be punished for intentionally making false statements if they would expose themselves to the risk of criminal prosecution if they testified truthfully. The WKStA found that such a danger would not have objectively existed because in no other case had anyone been prosecuted because of the positions that were at stake in the U-Committee. The defense attorneys, however, referred to several criminal or preliminary investigations that had begun because of similar cases. Judge Radasztics did not agree with this view.
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