2023-07-06 09:00:32
The former finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser of the former ÖVP/FPÖ government and four other defendants in the Buwog trial were rebuffed with their applications at the Constitutional Court (VfGH), the VfGH announced on Wednesday. The applications concerned an alleged bias of judges and the inhibition of statutes of limitations.
Grasser and the other defendants took the view that it was unconstitutional for the bias of a judge in a jury to be left to the court to decide for itself and for there to be no appeal against that decision.
According to the second application, it is also unconstitutional that the period from the beginning of the investigation to the final conclusion of the criminal proceedings is not to be included in the limitation period.
According to the Constitutional Court, from a constitutional point of view there is nothing to prevent the decision on the exclusion of a judge from being made first by the lay judges. This decision can be contested by an appeal against the nullity of the sentence.
But the Constitutional Court also saw no need for action in terms of statutes of limitations: “Statutory limitation periods primarily serve to ensure legal certainty, not to ensure a reasonable length of proceedings, as the applicants had argued,” the Constitutional Court further announced. “Whether there has been a violation of the right to a decision within a reasonable time must always be assessed on a case-by-case basis, but not a question of the constitutionality of the contested provision”.
Grasser and other defendants were accused in the Buwog trial of having illegally co-cashed in the privatization of federal housing in 2004 and the tax authorities’ leasing of the terminal tower in Linz. This involved 58,000 apartments across Austria that were privatized for EUR 961 million. The investigations into the Buwog cause started in 2009, charges were not filed until 2016, and the verdicts were made in 2020. Grasser has not yet been legally effective for eight years and, as reported, is fighting the verdict.
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