Image: (APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)
A second entrepreneur is also accused. The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) reported the charges, among other things, because of allegations of money laundering in a broadcast, but without naming names.
Wolf’s spokesman Josef Kalina gave no more than “no comment” when asked by APA. He did not confirm the identity of the accused.
According to the WKStA, the first accused entrepreneur (it was not possible to clarify which of the two people was meant by this, note) had hidden assets amounting to around 6.8 million euros and concealed their origin, and were thus guilty of money laundering. The funds are said to have originally come from acts of infidelity by those responsible at EADS Deutschland GmbH, and were transferred through bogus contracts from EADS Deutschland GmbH via Vector Aerospace LLP to several companies and private foundations or trusts, some of which were economically attributable to the first accused.
The second accused entrepreneur, in turn, received part of this money in gold (or received part in cash or name checks and then exchanged it for gold) and kept it in Switzerland until it was returned to the first accused, according to the public prosecutor. This was to (among other things) conceal the whereabouts of the money, according to the accusation.
The first accused is also accused of having given false testimony to the National Council’s Eurofighter investigative committee as a source of information on the matter. As the WKStA explained, the indictment was submitted in all the above-mentioned points after the project report had been approved by the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice in accordance with the “Weissensrat”.
The preliminary investigations conducted in this context against the second accused of infidelity to the detriment of his former employer were discontinued, it said, because the results of the preliminary investigations did not show that a criminal offense had been committed. The WKStA is currently investigating the second accused because of false testimony as a witness in an investigation by the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office and as a person providing information before the U-Committee. A project report on this suspicion was submitted to the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office at the end of April 2023.
According to the WKStA, further investigations against three suspects who are known by name for breach of trust to the detriment of EADS Deutschland GmbH and money laundering have not yet been completed.
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