Vienna, Austria: A court in Vienna has found former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz guilty of lying to a parliamentary committee investigating corruption, delivering an eight-month suspended prison sentence on Friday.
The conviction stems from testimony Kurz gave in 2020, denying a decisive role in appointing a close associate to head a state-owned company. Prosecutors presented evidence, including leaked messages, contradicting Kurz’s statements and suggesting his active involvement in the appointment.
Kurz maintains his innocence and has vowed to appeal the verdict. He described the ruling as “unfair” and expressed optimism for a favorable outcome in the second instance.
Becoming one of the youngest leaders in the world at age 31, he served twice as chancellor of Austria – from December 2017 to May 2019 and from January 2020 to October 2021. Both of his governments collapsed following a scandal.
In 2019 a video filmed in Spain emerged showing the leader of Kurz’s coalition partner, Heinz-Christian Strache, promising contracts in exchange for campaign support to a woman he believed was the niece of a Russian oligarch.
The resulting fervor toppled Kurz’s government, but his party won the next election and he built a new coalition with the Greens. Kurz appeared to have outridden the storm until investigators stumbled on a flurry of leaked text messages from Schmid, showing that the two men had communicated about the position the latter got with OBAG.
