Now it’s final: The suspended powerful head of the Justice Department, Christian Pilnacek, has revealed no official secrets. This is confirmed by the Higher Regional Court in Vienna. He had passed on information about investigations against a journalist. The journalist had written a critical article about the prosecution of economic and corruption cases.
The regional criminal court acquitted Pilnacek last year, arguing that neither public nor private interests were harmed by the revelation. The Innsbruck prosecutor’s office had appealed against this and the Higher Regional Court of Vienna has now joined the acquittal.
The charge was based on a complaint by the WKStA against a Presse editor for a critical article. Pilnacek announced the complaint from an editor of the “Kurier” – and also that the public prosecutor in Vienna would not open an investigation. At the trial, Pilnacek argued that the information was passed on by saying that he was outraged by the advertisement and that the damage to the WKStA was not his motivation.
The subdistrict court judge saw in her judgment that the disclosure of secrets had been met and also followed the public interest argument in the publication of the WKStA proceedings. However, not all elements of the offense are met: for a conviction, the disclosure of this professional secret must be “fit to harm a public or legitimate private interest”. “The fact that a preliminary investigation does not have to be done in public does not mean that it must be secret,” the judge said.
Source: Krone
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