The former Austrian Family Minister Sophie Karmasin together with the former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP): They are under investigation in connection with government advertisements and allegedly embellished opinion polls.
Image: EPA-EFE
Former family minister Sophie Karmasin is said to have wrongly received payments of more than 78,000 euros. She has now been charged with it. Further investigations in connection with ex-Chancellor Kurz are also underway.
DFormer Austrian family minister Sophie Karmasin has been charged with allegedly unlawfully continuing to pay wages after she left politics. The conservative ex-minister is accused of serious fraud and inciting anti-competitive agreements. The Vienna regional court confirmed on Tuesday that it had received the indictment from the corruption prosecutor’s office.
According to the indictment, following her ministerial career from the end of 2017 to mid-2018, Karmasin illegally received government salaries of more than 78,000 euros. She said she was earning nothing, but in fact she immediately went back to her former job as a pollster, it said. She also got two other pollsters to submit agreed-upon offers for studies for the Ministry of Sports, which Karmasin then undercut. Karmasin’s lawyer has denied the allegations in the past. She paid back the salary to the state.
Additional investigations are ongoing against Karmasin in connection with government advertisements and allegedly glossed-over opinion polls. The public prosecutor’s office is investigating the suspicion that a group led by former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) illegally diverted tax money. With the exception of a former confidant of Kurz, all suspects in this case have protested their innocence.
