A Vienna court on Friday sentenced a flamboyant, jet-setting former Austrian finance minister to eight years in prison in the country's biggest corruption trial since World War II.
Karl-Heinz Grasser was found guilty of abuse of power and involvement in kickbacks totalling €9.6 million ($11.7 million) over the sale of state-owned apartments.
During the trial, a co-defendant – who was also best man at Grasser's wedding – admitted passing on insider information enabling a consortium to buy 60,000 government-owned flats for €961 million, a million euros more than a rival bidder.
Just three years later, the consortium valued the apartments at about double the price.
Grasser, who as finance minister had decided to sell the flats and knew of the bids, and his co-defendants received kickbacks totalling €9.6 million.
"Only Grasser could have passed on information" to the winning consortium, judge Marion Hohenecker said.
She rejected a claim by a co-defendant that the relevant information had come from Joerg Haider, the controversial former head of the far-right Freedom Party who died in 2008 and who had himself faced multiple corruption allegations.
During his time in office, Grasser, now 51, frequently graced the tabloids with his wife, the heir to the Swarovski crystal empire.
At the time the one-time Haider protégé was seen as a political star with a possible future as chancellor.
Heinz Mayr, former head of the law faculty at Vienna University who has followed the trial, said the defendants' attempts to explain the events surrounding the deal at times seemed "very far-fetched".
"There were a lot of inconsistencies that could not be explained," he told AFP.
One of these explanations, highlighted in the verdict, was Grasser's claim that the 500,000 euros he had deposited in cash at Vienna's Meinl Bank – which filed for bankruptcy this year after it was accused of laundering more than $500 million euros – had been gifted to him by his mother-in-law.
His mother-in-law denied this and prosecutors were able to prove that he had not met her in Switzerland at the time he said she handed over the cash.
The case, which has attracted major media interest in the wealthy EU country, involved 14 defendants facing an array of charges including breach of trust, bribery, taking kickbacks, falsifying evidence, money laundering and fraud.
The case also touched on alleged corrupt payments related to the renting of an office block in the city of Linz.
The verdict was based on hundreds of witness statements as well as tapped telephone calls in which one of the defendants wonders how he could reasonably explain receiving hundreds of thousands of euros to the prosecution.
Grasser, along with several defendants who were also found guilty, will appeal, his lawyer said.
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Founders: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain.
Based: Riyadh
Offices: UAE, Vietnam and Germany
Founded: September, 2020
Number of employees: 70
Sector: FinTech, online payment solutions
Funding to date: $116m in two funding rounds
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'Gold'
Director:Anthony Hayes
Stars:Zaf Efron, Anthony Hayes
Rating:3/5
THE LOWDOWN
Romeo Akbar Walter
Rating: 2/5 stars
Produced by: Dharma Productions, Azure Entertainment
Directed by: Robby Grewal
Cast: John Abraham, Mouni Roy, Jackie Shroff and Sikandar Kher
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What are NFTs?
Are non-fungible tokens a currency, asset, or a licensing instrument? Arnab Das, global market strategist EMEA at Invesco, says they are mix of all of three.
You can buy, hold and use NFTs just like US dollars and Bitcoins. “They can appreciate in value and even produce cash flows.”
However, while money is fungible, NFTs are not. “One Bitcoin, dollar, euro or dirham is largely indistinguishable from the next. Nothing ties a dollar bill to a particular owner, for example. Nor does it tie you to to any goods, services or assets you bought with that currency. In contrast, NFTs confer specific ownership,” Mr Das says.
This makes NFTs closer to a piece of intellectual property such as a work of art or licence, as you can claim royalties or profit by exchanging it at a higher value later, Mr Das says. “They could provide a sustainable income stream.”
This income will depend on future demand and use, which makes NFTs difficult to value. “However, there is a credible use case for many forms of intellectual property, notably art, songs, videos,” Mr Das says.
What is safeguarding?
“Safeguarding, not just in sport, but in all walks of life, is making sure that policies are put in place that make sure your child is safe; when they attend a football club, a tennis club, that there are welfare officers at clubs who are qualified to a standard to make sure your child is safe in that environment,” Derek Bell explains.
Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
Coming 2 America
Directed by: Craig Brewer
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones
3/5 stars
