Status: 08/27/2021 1:33 p.m.
The Vienna Regional Court found the former Austrian Vice Chancellor Strache guilty of bribery in office. He was sentenced to 15 months probation.
Austria’s former Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has been found guilty of bribery by a Viennese court. Strache was sentenced to a 15-month suspended prison sentence in a corruption case in connection with the Ibiza affair, as judge Claudia Moravec-Loidolt announced.
The former party leader of the right-wing populist FPÖ is said to have influenced a law in favor of a private clinic out of economic interests. The politician is said to have received party donations and vacations in return. The owner of the clinic, Walter Grubmüller, who was friends with Strache, was sentenced to twelve months’ probation for bribery. The judgments are not yet final.
Denied allegations
At the center of the process were the efforts of the entrepreneur to gain access to the state private hospital financing fund with his Vienna beauty clinic. Inclusion in the fund makes it easier to offset medical services. Grubmüller donated a total of 12,000 euros in 2016 and 2017 to the FPÖ, which was still in opposition at the time. He also invited Strache to the island of Corfu. The clinic finally got access to the fund in 2018 after Strache became Vice Chancellor.
The judge said that “the chronology of events” leaves no doubt as to the existence of corruption. It is “implausible” that the politician does not want to have known anything about the donations. Strache had previously denied any wrongdoing. His defense attorney, like Grubmüller’s attorney, had demanded an acquittal.
Break of the coalition in 2019
In May 2019, the Ibiza affair led to the break in the coalition between Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s ÖVP and the FPÖ and to early elections. An unveiling video secretly shot in Ibiza had shown how Strache promised a supposed Russian oligarch’s niece government contracts in return for campaign support before the 2017 parliamentary elections. Strache subsequently resigned from his offices. During the investigation into the affair, officials found further evidence of bribery on his cell phone.