Former Austrian Vice Chancellor Strache acquitted again of a 15-month sentence for corruption

VIENNA, 10 Jan. (DPA/EP) –

The former vice chancellor of Austria and former leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Heinz-Christian Strache, has been acquitted again on Tuesday of a fifteen-month suspended sentence for a crime of corruption.

The case for which he has been acquitted revolves around donations valued at around 12,000 euros that his party would have received between 2016 and 2017 from the manager of a private hospital in Vienna as compensation for his maneuvers to change the law and favor the government. private business of this person, a friend of yours.

In August of last year, that same sentence was annulled and the trial had to be repeated when the court considered that a series of messages that would exonerate Strache, who a month earlier was acquitted of another crime of corruption regarding suspicious donations to a group close to its formation.

On this occasion, the judge has argued that there is insufficient evidence to prove that Strache was aware that the FPO had received said donation before the party opted for health reform. In addition to the far-right, the owner of the clinic has also been acquitted.

It is not the first case for alleged corruption from which Strache has emerged unsuccessful, since in July last year he was also acquitted of the accusation of having offered a businessman a position on the supervisory board of the state highway operator, Asfinag, in exchange for of donations for the FPO.

This matter has been under the focus of a commission of investigation in the Austrian Parliament that dealt with the so-called ‘Ibizagate’, a corruption scandal detected when the FPO was part of the government coalition of the former chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, also dotted with other cases of corruption that ended up decanting his political fall in 2021.

In ‘Ibizagate’ it was unleashed in May 2019 with the publication of a video in which Strache and his ‘number two’ in the FPO, Johann Gudenus, can be seen being tempted by a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch who offered them positive media coverage in exchange for public contracts.

The scandal forced Kurz to dismiss the Minister of the Interior, Herbert Kickl, from the FPO, which caused the rest of the cabinet members of that formation to present their resignation, this led to the dissolution of the government and the calling of new elections.