“During this investigation by the judiciary into a possible suspected corruption of advertisements, sparrows are being shot with nuclear missiles”, a well-known criminal law lawyer shakes his head in an interview with the eXXpress. Officially, nobody wants to criticize the procedure of the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA): “You know why anyway. . . ”
The public prosecutor’s special unit is already feared: by entrepreneurs, politicians and many lawyers – after all, WKStA official acts threaten years of investigation, massive damage to reputation and extremely high spending on defense.
How this special unit, for which Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens) is authorized to issue instructions, acts against possible suspects is now demonstrated by numerous logs of the house searches of October 6th, which have now been leaked to eu-infothek.com and eXXpress.
After the eXXpress has uncovered how a WKStA public prosecutor in his house search file complained about the “chaotic conditions” in the apartment of the demoscopist Sabine Beinschab, who was accused in the Kurz case, the minutes of the raid on the private address of the well-known pollster now also show and former Federal Minister Sophie Karmasin in Klosterneuburg.
Seven criminal investigators from the Federal Office for the Fight against Corruption and the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Austria sneaked through “a garden door that the wind pushed open” at 6:15 am to the search object. The group surprised the ex-politician’s husband in the kitchen, and a little later the first questions were asked of the former federal minister, who was only dressed in a dressing gown.
“MMag. Dr. Karmasin actually looked surprised that her house was being searched, ”the public prosecutor wrote in his dossier. She would also have “understood the allegations”, after which “she was given the opportunity to continue to dress”.
While the raid was already in progress, Sophie Karmasin is said to have told investigators that she was “not in the center”. And the current entrepreneur then made the investigators sit up and take notice – the public prosecutor wrote in his minutes: “You hope we wouldn’t find anything. You have no documents for the agreement. You know nothing of an agreement. “
According to the protocol, the criminal investigation officers rummaged through the “basement, ground floor, upper floor, garage, garden shed and car” in four hours, after which the investigators drove to the business address in downtown Vienna. What was found in Karmasin’s house: “Two notebooks with possibly relevant content” (quote). In the office, the prosecutor and his helpers took a PC with them. Correspondence with the second pollster involved in the case, Sabine Beinschab, was then found.
