For the pollster, the handcuffs had clicked on the basis of a court-approved arrest order. Leg scraping is said to have wiped the hard drive of her computer shortly before a house search carried out last Wednesday. IT experts from the WKStA’s investigation team are said to have found this out after checking the secured hardware. According to reports, the reason for arrest was that there was a risk of obscuration.
The WKStA further confirmed neither the arrest nor that an interrogation of the suspect Beinschabs was or is in progress. The APA was told on Tuesday afternoon that there was “currently” no information “on ongoing investigations”. A press release – there was one last Wednesday after the house searches in the Federal Chancellery, the Ministry of Finance and the VP headquarters – was “currently not planned”.
The reason for the secrecy of the WKStA could be that the interrogations of Beinschabs about the alleged hard drive deletion, but possibly also beyond, were not finished. This also indicated that the pollster’s legal representative could not be reached by phone for the APA on Tuesday afternoon and therefore possibly present at the leg scrape survey. The presumption of innocence applies to all suspects.
In principle, a person who is urgently suspected of a criminal offense can be stopped for 48 hours if there are appropriate reasons for detention, whereby the detention is usually initially in the detention cell of a police station. If further detention is required, the arrested person must be handed over to the competent court – in this specific case the Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters – within 48 hours. The court then examines whether more lenient measures can be ordered or whether pre-trial detention is imposed. According to APA information, the WKStA has not yet submitted an application for imprisonment over leg scraping.
Leg scraping is accused of infidelity and bribery as involved. Together with her colleague Sophie Karmasin, she is said to have implemented the agreement around the allegedly fudged surveys for Kurz and VP, and then submitted “bogus bills” that were “hailed” from the Ministry of Finance. Leg scrape is said to have “packed” her into a fraud prevention study commissioned by Finanz. Beinschab is the founder of the market research institute “Research Affairs”, which has carried out surveys for the “Austria” media group for many years.
