In the fraud process for allegedly lucrative business in Iraq, in which a wealthy businesswoman is said to have caused damage of 1.06 million euros, the evidence proceedings were concluded on Tuesday afternoon at the Vienna Regional Court. The judgments – the ex-husband of the 52-year-olds, a former official in the Interior Ministry, is also charged with alleged psychological contribution to the crime – was to be expected before 5 p.m.
“The cornerstones of the prosecution collapsed in the evidence process,” stated defense attorney Farid Rifaat in his closing lecture. The accused had no intent to cause damage to be proven. The public prosecutor, on the other hand, insisted on his indictment of serious commercial fraud, even if the injured party could not deny “a certain degree of naivety”.
The proceedings are about events between autumn 2015 and February 2017. The 52-year-old is said to have deceived companies and enriched themselves at their expense by promising them lucrative investments and business start-ups in Iraq and billed services in connection with them. In this context, the public prosecutor refers to allegedly falsified letters and e-mails from a “Ministry of State for Security Affairs” in Baghdad, which in fact are not supposed to exist. He had to take note, however, that this authority probably does exist after all. In an information from the Foreign Ministry forwarded to the court, it is said that this body “appears to exist”, that it is a matter of “a ministry close to Iran that is close to the secret service”.
The allegedly injured parties include a small company specializing in LED lighting that invested 161,000 euros in a tender for the lighting and video surveillance of a highway project in Baghdad. The project was worth 35 million euros, the company with fewer than a dozen employees wanted to handle it with sub-companies. The deal fell through. The same thing happened to a vehicle manufacturer who wanted to deliver armored vehicles worth $ 62 million in Iraq. The services of the 52-year-old, who has excellent contacts in crisis-ridden Iraq, cost 167,000 euros.
The prosecution accuses the former high-ranking official of having contributed to the psychological act by promoting his wife at the time as a highly competent business woman and introducing himself as an advisor to the Republic of Austria. He claims that he was never involved in the operational business of his wife. On the sidelines of the negotiation, he said to the APA that he was pushing the allegedly injured parties to make their investments, as he was alleged to be. Nevertheless, the public prosecutor’s office “persecuted him for five years”.