The leniency program will be extended by seven years. The turquoise-green government agreed on a draft in good time before the expiry of the regulation, which will be examined on Monday, as announced by the Ministry of Justice from Alma Zadić (Green). What is new is that in future potential key witnesses will also be able to approach the criminal police and not just the public prosecutor’s office.
The time for the appraisal is not necessarily ample, the deadline is in two weeks on November 8th. The extension to the end of 2028 with a few content adjustments should be decided this year, because the current regulation is limited to the end of the year.
The Ministry of Justice has evaluated the previous leniency program with the involvement of those authorities that use the regulation most frequently in practice, it said in a broadcast. These included the Public Prosecutor for Economic Affairs and Corruption (WKStA), the Federal Competition Authority and the Federal Cartel Prosecutor. The extension is intended to address the point of criticism that the leniency program was only possible when approaching the public prosecutor – in the future this should also be possible explicitly with the criminal police, as is added in Section 209a of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Instrument against crime and corruption
In the special case of key witnesses in connection with antitrust violations, according to the Ministry of Justice, the proposal is taken up to focus more on the contribution of employees who contribute to the investigation. The competition law leniency program should only benefit the cooperative employees.
“The leniency program is a central instrument in the fight against crime and corruption and facilitates the investigative work of the public prosecutor’s offices,” emphasized Zadić. “We were able to learn from the experiences of the last few years and even improve them.” The minister assured us that the attractiveness for potential key witnesses and the duration of the proceedings will be “evaluated on a broader basis.”
Voluntariness remains a criterion
The leniency program was introduced in 2011 and was extended by five years in 2016. The crown witness status can be granted for more than five years in the case of corruption and white-collar crime, as well as criminal offenses. The central criterion is still voluntariness. The potential key witness must actively approach the public prosecutor or the criminal police with his knowledge of criminal acts or evidence – and his contribution to the investigation must by far exceed the weight of his own crime.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the leniency program has come into effect 15 times since 2016, so the proceedings against the person concerned were initially discontinued “subject to subsequent persecution”. In four of these cases, the proceedings have meanwhile been permanently discontinued.
