Bribe: Ex-Finance Minister jailed

Former Austrian Finance Minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser, has been sentenced to four years in prison for bribery in connection with the sale of state-owned real estate after an appeal trial.

The Supreme Court (OGH) confirmed that Grasser had been found guilty of embezzlement and accepting gifts.

However, the court halved the original eight-year prison sentence due to the length of the proceedings and overturned Grasser’s conviction for evidence tampering.

Grasser served as Finance Minister from 2000 to 2007. He was a member of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) but left the far-right movement in 2003.

In 2020, he was found guilty of embezzlement, accepting gifts and falsifying evidence in connection with the sale of around 60,000 state-owned apartments.

At the time the lower court considered it proven that a total of €9.6 million ($10.4 million) in bribes was paid to Grasser and other convicted defendants during the privatisation of the properties, amounting to some one per cent of the sales proceeds.

The Supreme Court held that Grasser demanded the sum himself.

The Supreme Court also confirmed Grasser’s conviction for irregularities relating to the rental agreement of a tax authority.

“These are serious criminal offences with serious consequences,” said the presiding judge of the Supreme Court. “This is unprecedented in Austria.”

Grasser’s lawyers called the judgement political and questioned the objectivity of the first judge as her husband had made negative comments about Grasser on social media platform X.

But the Supreme Court underlined that judges are capable of passing objective judgments in spite of such expressions of opinion.

The Supreme Court made an erroneous judgement that violated the law and justice, Grasser said and added he plans to complain to the European Court of Human Rights.

However, that step would not postpone the jail sentence.