Court finds Jenewein guilty: Ott is acquitted – a scandal!

Court finds Jenewein guilty: Ott is acquitted – a scandal!

The trial surrounding the former chief inspector of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism (BVT), Egisto Ott, and the former FPÖ National Council member Hans-Jörg Jenewein, marks a dramatic turning point. How krone.at Reportedly, one of Ott's former colleagues testified in court, but showed significant memory gaps. In particular, it remained uncertain whether he had actually communicated with Ott under the pseudonym “Alpha77”. At the end of the trial, the court issued a guilty verdict against Jenewein, while Ott was acquitted. The trial relates to allegations of collaboration between Ott and Jenewein from August 2018, whereby Jenewein is said to have obtained information about secret meetings.

The allegations and upcoming consequences

There are serious allegations such as abuse of office and violation of confidentiality regulations. Jenewein is specifically accused of having requested confidential information from a former employee of Interior Minister Herbert Kickl between October 2018 and May 2019. In addition, Ott is said to have passed on secret information to a German acquaintance in June 2020, which casts his role as a former prosecutor in a new light. The prosecution accuses him of endangering an undercover investigator and thus the security of state organizations by passing on confidential data, which could undermine trust in Austria's security institutions meinkreis.at reported.

Particularly explosive: The prosecution argues that Ott developed “from a public protector to a threat” after his suspension from the BVT, which was due to earlier allegations. His defenders, however, deny the allegations and emphasize that Ott has made a name for himself as a “critic” in the BVT. Jenewein and Ott deny any wrongdoing, while prosecutors place a strong focus on their cooperation and the potential consequences for national security.