Showdown in the main jury room: Ex-Family Affairs Minister Sophie Karmasin has to expect her verdict today, Tuesday. The pollster is accused of illegal price-fixing in procurement procedures and serious fraud. On the fourth day of the trial, attorney Norbert Wess reported threats against his client.
The former Federal Minister Sophie Karmasin is said to have illegally received continued payments after leaving politics and concealed from the Federal Chancellery that she had resumed her self-employed work. The second allegation concerns illegal price-fixing in relation to studies for the Ministry of Sports. “It’s not all that funny” After the additional questioning of the second accused ministry employee, judge Patrick Aulebauer closed the evidentiary proceedings and began the summary reading of the files. Before that, there had been a verbal argument between Karmasin lawyer Norbert Wess and chief public prosecutor Gregor Adamovic from the WKStA. It was about the asset information on Karmasin, specifically about a property on which, according to the prosecutor, “a house is”. “A nice house,” says the judge, Adamovic repeats it. His client was threatened by people in front of her house in Lower Austria, Wess finds the “half-funny” inappropriate: “I found out about it at the weekend. It’s not all that funny,” he said to Adamovic, who on the first day of the trial also referred to the former minister’s expensive real estate in his plea. The judgments of the lay judges are expected in the afternoon. CASAG lawyers listened to the key witness. The former ÖVP minister was heavily burdened by the witnesses in the trial. The employees in the Ministry of Sports rejected their statements in unison. During the testimony of key witness Beinschab last week, the venerable hall in Wiener Landl was occupied to the last seat – alone a whole row by lawyers for other suspects in the big CASAG act. What they heard should not have helped to calm them down. Because Beinschab delivered her “great role model”, as she called Karmasin, coldly to the knife.
