It happened again two weeks ago. The ÖVP survey affair advanced to the next round. After the raid in October, the Public Prosecution Service for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) again had greed that they suspected in the Chancellery. In the course of the investigation, the WKStA wants electronic data. To this end, the email inboxes, disks and office documents of all employees who worked in public relations and strategic communications from December 2017 to October 2021 must be secured.
As a reminder, the poll affair is about the suspicion that members of the ÖVP around the then Foreign Minister Kurz would have illegally used budget funds from the Ministry of Finance from 2016 to create fake polls and publish them in the daily newspaper. . newspaper “Österreich”. The affair cost Sebastian Kurz his political career.
Emails en masse turned off
The prosecutor’s office argues that their new request that Kurz’s former close associates deleted masses of emails and exchanged their cell phones is now possibly lacking evidence. Although the Chancellery has agreed to cooperate, it reported legal concerns two weeks ago that employees’ personal rights could be violated if all emails were simply delivered in bulk without specification.
The Chancellery has now acquired legal expertise. First and foremost by Wolfgang Peschorn, president of the Finanzprokuratur, by criminal law professor Alexander Tipold and lawyer Katharina Körber-Risak. The trio also identified serious legal flaws in the order to secure the WKStA.
Fishing in the dark
On Wednesday, the WKStA was notified of this legal view that the order would not be enforced. It is now hoped that a path will be found together with the WKStA for the corruption hunters to obtain the data – but on the path of administrative assistance. Legally, a seizure order is a coercive measure by the WKStA, tantamount to a raid.
No appeal to an authority
If an authority is affected by investigations, it is common for data to be requested in the form of administrative assistance. Nor can an authority appeal against an order. Only the employees concerned can object.
The main criticism is that the contents of the seizure order are not sufficiently established. What does that mean in concrete terms? Specific persons are not mentioned in the order, nor are objects specified. You could almost say that the WKStA wants almost random data (including all private correspondence and information) from all employees of the communications department for the past four years. The WKStA is fishing in the dark, so the accusation.
The lawyers believe that the WKStA could have taken a different path, first conducting surveys to find out which people in the Chancellery were working with Sebastian Kurz’s closest confidants. Once those affected have been identified, the data could have been requested much more specifically.
What options does the WKStA have now? She may decide to cooperate with the Federal Chancellery or have a search carried out. That would be the next level of escalation.
Source: Krone
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