Almost four weeks before the National Council elections, the pink security spokeswoman targets the green Minister of Justice. The Public Prosecutor’s Office apparently has little focus on relevant matters. Meanwhile, e-mails were seized at the Federal Administrative Court.
NEOS MP Stephanie Krisper accuses department head Alma Zadić of not providing the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) with sufficient support. While the number of open major cases has risen to 74, the WKStA’s staffing situation is stagnant at 44 full-time positions.
“Zadić is abandoning the WKStA and endangering the fight against corruption,” said Krisper, who complained that the minister did nothing “beyond lip service.”
Recently, the ‘Falter’ has sharply criticized the high staff turnover at the WKStA under the leadership of Ilse Maria Vrabl-Sanda: Behind the scenes, the ‘Ibiza team’, which has ‘meticulously gone through tens of thousands of pages of files since 2019’, is falling apart. The old prosecutor Gregor Adamovic is now, due to a lack of prospects in the WKStA, ‘as a judge in St. Pölten responsible for bar fights instead of Sebastian Kurz.’ against the wall – without Alma Zadić as head of the authority, Ilse Maria Vrabl-Sanda takes over the wheel.”
Not enough resources for Benko and Co.
In fact, the weakness of leadership in the Ministry of Justice and the WKStA, which is bound by instructions, goes even deeper: Adamovic’s time as chief prosecutor was also marked by searches and seizures. A lot of taxpayers’ money, little result. In the biggest criminal case of the Republic, the bankruptcy of Benko/Signa, there was less effort from the WKStA.
High-ranking prosecutors rarely released
Apparently, it is not possible to free up a number of high-ranking prosecutors for particularly relevant white-collar crime cases, as research by “Krone” shows. For example, the group leader and a senior prosecutor in charge of the multibillion-dollar bankruptcy of Signa involving financial juggler René Benko also have to deal with the multimillion-dollar disaster surrounding the complex Commerzialbank Mattersburg case.
In the interest of taxpayers, it would be urgent to shed light on the opaque Signa group in its darkest corners, as the cautious head of the Financial Prosecution Service, Wolfgang Peschorn, who is also the Republic’s lawyer, has been emphatically warning for months.
As minister, Alma Zadić wanted to bring more transparency to the appointment of positions. However, it was only in July that she was reprimanded by the European Commission, which criticized shortcomings in appointments in the Austrian judiciary in its annual rule of law report. A concrete example was the management of the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG), which remained vacant from 2022 to 2024. Eventually, number three of the proposal was installed.
BVwG: Emails are secured
The BVwG is the largest court in Austria with more than 200 judges. And apparently the largest construction site of the minister. Current documents from the Innsbruck Public Prosecutor’s Office, which the “Krone” has, show that the former president, the former vice president and other executives are suspected of having manipulated the distribution of cases. The suspects deny the serious charges and are presumed innocent.
The Public Prosecutor recently ordered the seizure of the suspect’s emails at the Federal Computer Center. The investigation concerns “the suspicion of the crime of abuse of public authority,” as the order states.
The investigation did not prevent Alma Zadić from bidding farewell to the former president at a ceremony in April 2024: the Minister of Justice insisted on presenting him “the Large Silver Medal of Honor with the Star for Services to the Republic of Austria in recognition of his achievements.”
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
