The trial against a 48-year-old man, who has to answer for serious commercial fraud, embezzlement and money laundering, continued at the Vienna Regional Court on Friday. From 2018 to June 2021, the accused is said to have stolen money from relatives of people housed in the prison for mentally abnormal offenders. The accused is said to have fooled the families into thinking that he could obtain conditional release for the people in question or better prison conditions for them.
The 48-year-old denies the allegations, but the first witnesses charged him on Friday. A woman had contacted the defendant and the aid association he had founded because she wanted to get her brother out of prison. A well-known lawyer had declared this to be hopeless, but the accused had assured her that “he would get him out quickly,” the woman said in court.
“Aspirations futile”
The family paid almost 12,000 euros for allegedly required reports and applications. However, the psychiatric report is said to have only cost 1,800 euros, and the 48-year-old is said to have kept the difference of around 10,000 euros. The woman doesn’t want to know.
According to the indictment, the accused is said to have taken money in 29 cases, although he is said to have often known that his efforts were futile.
The hearing will continue next week. If the man with four previous convictions – he was convicted of serious commercial fraud around 2004 – is found guilty, he faces up to ten years in prison.
Source: Nachrichten
