Did he write the wrong report to the prosecutor? Drug mediator in court in Salzburg
A police officer of the Salzburg State Criminal Police Office is charged with “false certification and authentication in the office” as well as “false evidence” in connection with a drug case of enormous dimensions. On Monday at the Salzburg Regional Court, he denied the accusation that he had deliberately concealed an informant or undercover agent in a report to the public prosecutor’s office. The trial was adjourned.
A drug investigator from the LKA Salzburg was confronted on Monday in a trial at the Salzburg Regional Court with the allegations of “false authentication and authentication in office” and “false evidence”. In February 2019, as an investigator in a case of suspected heroin trafficking of enormous dimensions, the drug investigator is said to have submitted an incorrect incident report to the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office. Specifically, he is said to have recorded in his incident report at the time that the suspicion of a later accused Turkish man of enormous heroin trafficking was based on an official letter from the Bosnian police. In fact, the public prosecutor’s office, the suspicion was based on information from a confidant, a so-called “VP” – which the police officer kept silent. The public prosecutor said in the current trial: “The accused has deliberately concealed the true origin of the suspected situation.”
Accusation: Police officer found the true origin of the suspicion against an accused not disclosed
In the case at the time, in which the now accused drug investigator was investigating, it was about the suspicion that a Turkish-Kurdish group of perpetrators allegedly wanted to implement more than 400 kilograms of heroin and had already delivered 100 kilograms of heroin to Salzburg in order to sell it here. According to the current indictment, the accused Salzburg police officer should incorrectly or incompletely document his investigative steps against the main suspect – a Turk who was looking for a buyer for the heroin; Specifically, in his report to the public prosecutor, the defendant kept silent about his personal meeting with the confidant, who is himself anchored in the criminal scene.
According to the prosecutor in the trial on Monday, the accused had the information he received from his undercover agent (“VP”) translated into Bosnian; and then he emailed translation to a policeman he knew in Bosnia. The information from the undercover agent was then sent back to the Austrian authorities in an official mail from Bosnia. In the incident report to the public prosecutor, the Salzburg drug investigator then cited that the e-mail from the Bosnian police would justify the suspicion against the Turkish, the prosecutor accused him: The true flow of information was thus misrepresented in the incident report.
The now accused police officer also testified as a witness in Wiener Neustadt in August 2019 in the criminal trial against the then main accused Turkish. When asked by the judge in the Wiener Neustädter trial how he came up with the main defendant Turkish, the official referred to the letter from Bosnia, said the prosecutor. “He did not reveal the real origin of the suspicion against the Turks.
The accused policeman protested his innocence
The drug investigator protested his innocence to judge Anna-Sophia Geisselhofer. He replied that Bosnian colleagues had contacted him in 2018 and agreed that they would send a Bosnian informant. According to the Salzburg investigator, he was supposed to document what this undercover agent said. “If this information is then checked” and also pass “, then it would finally be officially sent to Austria,” so that we can have one approach, “claimed the accused.”
The judge asked why he had assumed that the authorities in Bosnia could not write an independent report. – “Because it was agreed at the time. I should listen to it and then send it down,” replied the defendant. He therefore had the content translated immediately so that everything went faster. Under then also described the whole matter to the public prosecutor’s office and also named the informant.
“He did not want to cover up anything,” emphasized his defense attorney, RA Wolfgang Auer. “The initial information did not come from the person of trust, but from the Bosnian police. They told us who the person of trust was.” In addition, according to a decree for undercover investigators, “the confidants in negotiations and in public documents should not even be named,” said the defense attorney.
V-man not mentioned in the incident report is himself deep in the drug swamp
Also noteworthy: the said person of trust or the informant was not allowed to stay in Austria. The police apparently did not want to have anything to do with the man, who himself has several previous convictions and who is currently under criminal proceedings in Salzburg for extensive drug trafficking, because there were difficulties with him.
“It’s always the policemen who work their asses that have problems. I can’t sit in the office and pick my nose in my job.” The judge replied: “But we have a constitutional state with certain rules.”
The trial was finally adjourned to December 7th for further evidence. Three more witnesses will be heard.