Former MEP indicted for corruption

Austrian prosecutors file charges against Ernst Strasser, who resigned last year as an MEP in the wake of a bribery scandal.

Special prosecutors in Vienna have charged Ernst Strasser, a former Austrian interior minister, with corruption in connection with a sting operation by British reporters that led to his resignation as a member of the European Parliament last year.

If found guilty, Strasser faces between one and ten years in prison.

Strasser, who is a member of the centre-right Austrian People’s Party, was one of the MEPs targeted by reporters for Britain’s Sunday Times in 2010. The reporters posed as lobbyists offering money to MEPs – an offer that Strasser accepted. Strasser denies the bribery charges.

Prosecutors say that he demanded an annual fee of €100,000 in exchange for influencing legislation.

Strasser was interior minister in 2000-04 and an MEP in 2009-11. Strasser resigned after the scandal, as did Zoran Thaler, a centre-left MEP who had previously been Slovenia’s foreign minister.

Adrian Severin, a centre-left Romanian MEP, refused to resign but was expelled from the Socialists & Democrats group in the European Parliament. Romanian prosecutors filed charges against Severin last month.

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No charges have been filed against Pablo Zalba Bidegain, a Spanish centre-right MEP who was also targeted by the sting operation.

An investigation of Strasser by OLAF, the European Commission’s anti-fraud office, is still ongoing.