Kurz received an eight-month suspended sentence after being found guilty of lying in a parliamentary inquiry.

Austria’s former chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been given an eight-month suspended sentence after he was found guilty of perjury by a Vienna court following a four-month trial.

The former head of state, once hailed as a “prodigy” of European conservatives, had denied that during his term as chancellor he had downplayed his influence on the appointment of executives at the state holding company OBAG, whose appointments were formally the responsibility of his finance minister.

However, the focus of Kurz’s corruption case was his statement to a parliamentary commission of inquiry that he was “involved in the sense of an informed person” but did not actively participate in the appointment.

However, the court agreed with the prosecution that Kurz was indeed the final decision-maker and presented evidence including text messages and statements from former loyalist Thomas Schmid, the first head of OBAG, who served as a state witness.

“I find this part of the verdict very unfair,” Kurz said after the verdict was announced. “We have filed an appeal and I am very optimistic that we will receive a verdict in our favor in the second instance.”

The trial and other ongoing corruption investigations have damaged the charismatic hardliner’s reputation and deprived him of any chance of a political comeback.

In 2017, at 31, Kurz became one of the world’s youngest heads of state, forming a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).

Amid a scandal in 2019 when the FPO leader was implicated in a video operation, the coalition collapsed. Kurz then won an early election and formed a coalition with the Greens, who later forced him out of office in 2021 due to the corruption investigation.

But his Austrian People’s Party continues to lead the government under current Chancellor Karl Nehammer.

Kurz has insisted he is innocent of misleading a parliamentary inquiry investigating wide-ranging corruption scandals that toppled his first far-right government in 2019.

Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as a victim of selective prosecution and an opposition that wanted to “destroy him.”

Kurz said he had been informed of Schmid’s appointment but had not decided on it and rejected suggestions that he had tried to control everything.

On the other hand, Schmid testified that Kurz had set up a “system” in which he held the reins and could veto any hiring of personnel in critical companies.

Separately, prosecutors are still investigating Kurz on suspicion of embezzling public funds to finance elections in order to improve his image and pay for the positive coverage that made his success in 2017 possible.

However, they have so far been unable to obtain a conviction since a video emerged in 2019 showing Kurz’s then vice-chancellor of the FPÖ offering public contracts for election campaign help to an alleged Russian investor.

Following their exit from politics, the election year Conservatives have slipped to second or third place in the polls, making it likely they will lose seats in a general election this year, leading to speculation that Shortly could return to the top of the party at some point and reverse his fortunes.

However, polls have shown that a clear majority of Austrians say they do not want to see him return to government, and Kurz said he is happy as a businessman and is now involved in numerous private international companies.