As her lawyer Norbert Wess informed the APA and the Chancellery confirmed, Karmasin has now also refunded the outstanding amount of almost 12,000 euros claimed by the Federal Chancellery. Karmasin herself emphasized that she “under no circumstances wanted to violate the legal requirements”.
Politicians who leave office and are not entitled to continue gainful employment will continue to receive 75 percent of their monthly salary for a maximum of six months upon request. At the beginning of March it became known that Karmasin had applied for continued salary payment after the end of her term of office, although she had other income. She is said to have received four months’ salary. Since the “optics are not good”, Karmasin arranged for a repayment according to the media reports and transferred around 62,000 euros.
However, because she is said to have received a total of more than 74,000 euros in continued payment, the Chancellery requested the outstanding amount via the Finanzprokuratur, as the ORF reported this week.
According to her lawyer, Karmasin has now also refunded this difference of exactly 11,947.79 euros to the Federal Chancellery. She thus reimbursed the entire gross amount that she received as part of the continued payment of ministerial salaries. A spokesman for the Chancellery confirmed to the APA on Friday morning that the repayment had been made.
“At no point did I want to receive post-ministerial pay that I am not entitled to,” Karmasin said in a written statement to APA. “It is important for me to emphasize that I did not want to violate the legal requirements under any circumstances.” That’s why she made inquiries in advance and actively ended the continued payment of wages in May 2018, before the end of the six months, “when I was receiving a regular income again,” explained Karmasin.
“Regardless of this, I see it as my responsibility,” as a former minister, to transfer the full gross amount of the continued payment of wages back to the Federal Chancellery, said Karmasin. “That has now been fully accomplished.”
Since Karmasin only repaid the first sum as a result of a research request from the ORF “ZiB2”, the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA) did not assume, according to the ORF report on Tuesday, that “active remorse” was involved in this case. grabs. It was “completely clear” that there would be investigations, according to the WKStA in its files. “Therefore, there is an urgent suspicion that Mag. Dr. Karmasin-Schaller acted with the alleged repayment in the belief that under the given circumstances – with the publication of the research results by the journalist in mind – there was no longer any possibility of successfully refusing the repayment to have.”
Karmasin is being investigated in the ÖVP advertisements affair for breach of trust and bribery and also for money laundering, offenses against anti-competitive agreements and serious fraud. The WKStA suspects Karmasin of having been the “originator and key idea generator” of a PR tool from which the then Foreign Minister and later Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and the ÖVP are said to have benefited by means of taxpayer-financed surveys. Karmasin denies this.
Source: Nachrichten
