VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria’s conservative former chancellor Sebastian Kurz went on trial for perjury on Wednesday in a case separate from the corruption investigation that forced him from office but which could still influence his ruling party’s electoral fate.
Kurz, who denies all the allegations made against him, has quit politics yet the ruling coalition he formed with the left-wing Greens in 2020 remains in power. The current parliament still has just under a year left.
The case centres on whether Kurz lied to a parliamentary commission of inquiry when he testified in 2020 that as chancellor he was not involved in a decision to make a party ally head of Austrian state holding company OBAG. He said he was only informed of deliberations.
If convicted, Kurz faces up to three years in prison or, more likely, a fine.
“It is certainly my right as a defendant to lay out how I see things and at least make it known if I am of the opinion that my comments are being misinterpreted and my words are being twisted against me,” Kurz, 37, told dozens of reporters in the Vienna courthouse shortly before the trial began.
While Kurz’s closest allies like former finance minister Gernot Bluemel have also quit politics, many conservatives in the current government are close to Kurz, including Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who was his interior minister.
Kurz’s People’s Party (OVP) is currently neck-and-neck with the opposition Social Democrats in opinion polls, well behind the far-right Freedom Party on around 30%.
The Greens forced Kurz from office two years ago after prosecutors placed him and nine others under investigation on suspicion of breach of trust and corruption. A decision on whether to charge the suspects has not yet been made.
The suspicion is that when Kurz was vying to become leader of the OVP public funds were both used to commission doctored polling showing him far ahead of party rivals and funneled towards a tabloid newspaper that published the polling as news.
He became OVP leader in 2017 and led the party to victory in a parliamentary election that year, forging a ruling coalition with the far-right Freedom Party that collapsed in scandal in 2019. He then again led the OVP to an election victory.
As chancellor, Kurz was one of Europe’s youngest leaders and a household name in German-speaking countries known for his hard line on immigration.
(Reporting by Francois Murphy and Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich; editing by Christina Fincher)
