Two sisters were involved in pushing through a controversial court order to seize material from the state-run TV station, the ORF , it has emerged.
http://kurier.at/kultur/2037251.php
The involvement of two family members working in leading positions in the legal system on the same case violates Austrian laws put in place to guarantee judicial independence.
The General Procurator today announced a review.
It is not clear why the involvement of the two sisters — Upper State Prosecutoir Ilse-Maria Vrabl-Sanda and Upper Court Judge Michaela Sanda — is only now being scrutinised.
Ilse-Maria Vrabl-Sanda also appears to have rubber stamped the promotion of state prosecutor Heike-Karin Heckl on September 1st after she summoned journalists for interrogation „as guilty parties“ for reporting on the Hypo Alpe Adria case even though they had not broken any laws in Austria.
It is not clear why a state prosecutor who has committed an illegal act should be selected for promotion immediately afterwards.
Social Democrat Niko Pelinka said that he expected the court order to seize ORF material to be cancelled in view of the fact that the two family members should never have been allowed to work on the same case in the first place.
The illegal interrogations as well as the decision by the court to seize material from the ORF in violation of laws on confidentiality of sources have contributed to an unprecedented deterioration in press freedom in the country.
The revelation that two sisters in violation of existing laws have been behind the unprecedented persecution of journalists uncovering financial scandals will fuel fears that the Austrian justice system has been taken over by a nepotistic clique who have close personal and financial links to bankers, politicians and lobbyists, and who are instrumentalisting the justice system to crush criticism and debate about one of the country’s biggest bank scandals in years for personal reasons.
Justice Minister Bandion-Ortner was reportedly offered the job after a meeting with Raiffeisen bank head Christian Konrad; she refused to answer parliamentary questions on the meeting, prompting speculation that she may be concealing a personal link or conflict of interest.
Bandion-Ortner has been the focus of criticism after a series of eccentric decisions by justice officials has resulted in no or minimal action against bankers and politicians, who have caught in cases of financial fraud against the tax payer involving billions of euros.
On the other hand, the same prosecutors such as Ilse-Maria Vrabl-Sanda and Judge Michaela Sanda interrogate journalists who have broken no law, order video material to be seized and help hound activists.
In Austria, there are only 350 state prosecutors and 1,600 judges, resulting in a close knit, highly interlinked judicial system, which has come under massive criticism in recent weeks following various scandals.
In Voralberg, a network of judges, solicitors and curators were found to have been forging wills for years without any investigation by state prosecutors or the police in spite of criminal charges.
The justice official who finally filed criminal charges has been mobbed and forced into early retirement, it has emerged, fuelling fears of a culture of rampant corruption.
Article 7, paragraph 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights – the so-called „Nuremberg Clause“ — allows for an corrupt justice system to be put on trial on the same basis as the judges and prosecutors of the corrupt Nazi Germany justice system were put on trial, asserting there are constant, legal norms as defined by what is acceptable to civilised nations that not even justice officials can violate no matter how many court orders they and their siblings issue.
