Vienna “Please think Austrian!” A corruption prosecutor recently demanded of the jury in the Vienna Criminal Court. What the lawyer meant by that is not flattering for the country.
He wanted to make the jury, who in Austria rule on guilt or innocence in particularly serious crimes, aware of how widespread a particular type of corruption is in their country. The principle: “I give you so that you give to me.”
In the specific case, the economic and corruption prosecutor’s office (WKStA) had accused the real estate investor René Benko and the industrialist Michael Tojner, among others, because they are said to have bribed the green politician Christoph Chorherr.
The prosecutors claimed that the member of the Vienna municipal council had accepted donations for his charity and in return had been of service to investors, for example with the development of land.
However, the prosecutor’s fiery plea did not go down well. The jury acquitted the defendants in late January. There is no direct connection between the donations and the decisions made by the City of Vienna.
The department store owner has been acquitted in court.
(Photo: Getty Images for Oberpollinger/ )
Austria’s corruption prosecutors are currently taking on the country’s elite. A striking number of politicians and entrepreneurs are involved in the proceedings, and even former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is under investigation.
Does Austria have a corruption problem?
The politician’s followers are said to have bought benevolent reporting from the tabloid “Österreich” with advertisements. Since the affair was blown in October 2021, the Austrians have been waiting anxiously to see whether the corruption prosecutors will also accuse the former luminary Kurz.
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The so-called advertisement affair is just one of numerous episodes that have convinced many Austrians that their country has a corruption problem. From their point of view, it was therefore high time that the judiciary shifted up a gear in the fight against evil.
However, the bold approach of the corruption prosecutors has provoked controversial discussions. Are public prosecutors supposedly more left-wing politically leading a crusade against bourgeois Austria, as Kurz also claimed? Or is a new generation of prosecutors just taking their job seriously, which seems like a new experience for certain politicians and entrepreneurs?
When Austrians complain about the alleged corruption in the country, it is a rather vague feeling. It does not mean, for example, that you have to slip a banknote to a civil servant in this country to get an urgently needed form. The general consensus is that the administration is effective and officials are largely law-abiding.
In Vienna, the elite constantly cross paths
Instead, one problem is the “friendly economy” mentioned by the public prosecutor in the Chorherr case. Austria is a small country, in Vienna the elite are constantly bumping into each other and contacts are made quickly. This quickly creates an expectation that people will help each other out in an informal way when problems arise. “In Austria, people don’t think so much in institutional terms, but rather in terms of personal networks,” says former law professor and university rector Manfried Welan in an interview.
The case of the industrialist Siegfried Wolf, which came to light at the end of 2021 and is not yet over, shows what this means in everyday life. The entrepreneur with diverse connections to the German and Russian car industry had to pay taxes at the behest of the authorities because there had been changes in the double taxation agreement between Austria and Switzerland.
However, the businessman felt he was being treated unfairly and intervened with the Minister of Finance instead of going through the authorities. After much back and forth, the parties agreed on an additional payment.
The judiciary has repeatedly linked Austria’s ex-vice chancellor with allegations of corruption.
(Photo: IMAGO/SEPA.Media)
However, there was still disagreement about default interest. To avoid them, Wolf sought contact with a tax officer. The result was more than satisfactory for both sides: Wolf was waived a large part of the interest on arrears, and thanks to Wolf’s intercession in the ministry, the tax officer was given a managerial post at another tax office that was better for her.
A key figure in the Treasury
It is curious how this case and other affairs became public: In the course of investigations, the prosecutors confiscated data carriers from Thomas Schmid, who worked between 2013 and 2019 as Secretary General and Head of Cabinet in the Ministry of Finance and exchanged chat messages with many politicians and entrepreneurs. The WKStA is still busy evaluating these chats, allegedly there are 300,000 of them.
Many investigations go back to chats by the former head of cabinet.
(Photo: IMAGO/SEPA.Media)
In view of this abundance, many in Austria expect that the prosecutors will still encounter some inconsistencies. So far, however, no one has been convicted in the prominent cases. There were only acquittals not only in the Chorherr case, but also in the trial against former Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the right-wing populist politician had done the hospital investor Walter Grubmüller a favor and accepted party donations for the FPÖ. However, the court did not consider such a connection to be proven. According to comments, the WKStA had suffered another setback.
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The resolute head of the authority did not let this criticism sit on her. Ilse-Maria Vrabl-Sanda said that you don’t play football matches with winners and losers in court. Rather, the WKStA is also a “factual investigation authority”. And prosecutors would have to file charges if there was a greater chance of a guilty verdict than an acquittal.
The corruption prosecutor’s office runs the risk of getting bogged down. Although she is already conducting many, sometimes complex, proceedings, she often appeals when acquitted. She takes on more and more work.
“Wait, I know someone there”
The corruption prosecutors also want to move forward with the Strache case, although the second-instance judge dismantled the indictment. The incriminating facts were simply missing, she said.
“If the WKStA is no longer making any progress, it is better to let a case rest and concentrate on provable central allegations,” says Robert Kert, law professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Especially since the often lengthy procedures are a burden for those affected.
From a legal point of view, friendliness is difficult to grasp: it is a cultural phenomenon from which the law bounces off depending on the case. “Some behavior by decision-makers may be reprehensible or undesirable; But that doesn’t mean it’s a criminal offense,” says Kert.
The former university rector Welan still remembers what he often heard as a young man when he asked an established mentor for advice: “Wait, I know someone there.” Apparently this attitude is still widespread in Austria. The judiciary is just gritting its teeth out on her.
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