Former Austrian finance minister Grasser handed four-year prison term

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March 25, 2025 7:01 AM EDT

Former Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser speaks to the media, next to his lawyers Manfred Ainedter and Norbert Wess, on the day he appears before the high court in Vienna, Austria, March 25, 2025.REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria's top court on Tuesday sentenced former Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser to four years in prison, dismissing his appeal against his 2020 conviction on corruption charges.

Austria's Supreme Court upheld allegations of corruption raised against Grasser but halved the original sentence of eight years handed down against the former political star. That verdict had not been legally binding pending appeal.

Despite the reduction, the sentence is one of the longest ever issued to a prominent political figure in Austria.

In 2020, a lower court found Grasser guilty of fraud, accepting illicit gifts and falsifying evidence, in a scandal centring on the role he played during the sale of thousands of state-owned homes to private investors two decades ago.

Grasser has always denied the charges, which centred on him allegedly passing on information to bidders about the process.

He called the ruling a miscarriage of justice and vowed to appeal it at the European Court of Human Rights.

Grasser, 56, who was Austria's finance minister between 2000 and 2007, was once a darling of the political right in the country, and is married to an heiress of the Swarovski family.

(Reporting by Alexandra Schwarz, writing by Dave Graham, editing by Thomas Seythal)


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