Former Vice-Chancellor of Austria sentenced to probation in corruption case

A Vienna court sentenced former Vice-Chancellor of Austria Heinz-Christian Strache to 15 months in prison on probation in a corruption case. informs Correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The verdict has not yet entered into force. The politician was found guilty of granting government benefits to a cosmetic surgery clinic in exchange for a € 10,000 donation to the populist Austrian Freedom Party (APS).

In May 2019, Strache was forced leave the government as head of the Freedom Party. The reason was the so-called “Ibiza Gate”. A video was leaked on the Web, in which Vice-Chancellor Strache in Spanish Ibiza communicates with a certain Russian woman who introduced herself as “the niece of the Russian oligarch” and called herself Alena Makarova.

Spiegel wrotethat their meeting took place before the 2017 Austrian elections. In the conversation, they talked about the possibility of some Russians to sponsor Strache’s campaign in exchange for government orders and the purchase of the Kronen Zeitung newspaper. The scandal caused a split in the ruling coalition, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz also resigned… Later, Kurz’s party won early elections, after which he again headed the Austrian government.