Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz gives a statement after verdict in his trial at a courtroom in Vienna, Austria, 23 February 2024. Sebastian Kurz was given an eight-month suspended sentence for making false statements. The Austrian Economic and Corruption Prosecutor's Office accused former chancellor Kurz and former cabinet chief at the Chancellery Bernhard Bonelli of having given false testimony as a respondent in the 'Ibiza-gate' Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry in 2021 and 2022, as well as statements made in the preliminary investigation, an offense punishable by up to three years of imprisonment. The 'Ibiza-gate' scandal brought down the right-wing coalition government in Austria in May 2019, when a video emerged of former Vice Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache and several other people, filmed in a villa on the Spanish island of Ibiza. EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA The ruling removes Kurz's only criminal conviction, taking away a serious obstacle to a future political comeback for the 38-year-old, although prosecutors have yet to decide whether to charge him over potential corruption-related offences in a separate investigation that forced him from office in 2021.
The court said Kurz "was acquitted because the objective offence of giving false evidence was not fulfilled".
Kurz denies all wrongdoing.
"I have been confronted with accusations for years. There have been numerous court hearings - a huge amount of confrontation with these accusations. You have all witnessed how much this has been celebrated and that it has now all collapsed," he said outside the court.
The case centred on whether Kurz was merely kept informed of deliberations on the appointment of executives for newly created state holding company OBAG when he was chancellor, or was in fact making the decisions. The appointments were formally his finance minister's responsibility.
Kurz testified to a parliamentary commission of inquiry in 2020 that he was "involved in the sense of informed". The judge who heard the case at first instance ruled that was not true and Kurz played an active role.
"What has come out is what I have always said, namely that I did not tell any untruths in the committee of inquiry," Kurz said.
Kurz has left the Austrian People's Party (OVP) and quit politics but some individuals within the OVP hope he will return if there is a change of party leadership, even though polling suggests the majority of Austrians do not want him to stage a comeback.
Kurz led his party to election victories in 2017 and 2019 by adopting a hard line on immigration similar to that of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which won the last parliamentary election in September.
He now works as a consultant and tech entrepreneur and says he is happy in his new career.
Having come second in the last election, the OVP leads the current three-party centrist coalition government headed by OVP Chancellor Christian Stocker.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy and Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich; Editing by Sharon Singleton)