Vienna court finds Austrian ex-Chancellor Kurz guilty of perjury
A Vienna court yesterday found Austria’s conservative former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz guilty of perjury and handed him an eight-month suspended prison sentence, dealing a serious blow to any chance he may have of staging a political comeback.
“Sebastian Kurz is guilty,” Judge Michael Radasztics presiding over the trial said at the start of his ruling.
The case focused on whether Kurz, 37, was merely kept informed of deliberations on the appointment of executives for newly created state holding company OBAG when he was chancellor or was in fact calling the shots. The appointments were formally his finance minister’s responsibility.
Kurz testified to a parliamentary commission of inquiry in 2020 that he was “involved in the sense of informed”. The judge ruled that was not true and Kurz played an active role.
“I find this part of the ruling very unfair,” Kurz told reporters after the evening ruling, referring to the fact he was found guilty of one of three counts.
“We have appealed and I am very optimistic that we will receive a ruling in our favour in the second instance.”
Prosecutors produced evidence including text messages and testimony by a star witness - former Kurz loyalist Thomas Schmid, the first head of OBAG, who has turned state witness.
The judge said he found
Schmid to be a credible witness and dismissed attempts by the defence to depict him as unreliable, as well as their argument that the number of witnesses called by the prosecution meant the case against Kurz was weak.