AUSTRIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Michael Rohregger, Rohregger Rechtsanwälte
9.2 Likely Changes to the Applicable Legislation of the Enforcement Body Due to government reshuffles in Austria, the Tax Fraud Prevention Act did not come into force in 2020. The aim of this legislation was to increase transparency in the area of direct taxation, with the aim of improving the fight against tax avoid - ance and tax evasion in the internal market. It shall define the obligation to report cross-border notifiable transactions to the Austrian compe - tent authority within a certain period of time and define the automatic exchange of information between the notifications received and the com - petent authorities of the other member states. In addition, this law should lead to a tightening of tax and customs offences. After the parliamentary elections in autumn 2024, it remains to be seen which parties will form the new government and on which gov - ernment programme they will agree. The Aus - trian Constitutional Court recently decided upon an application regarding the securing of data storage devices in criminal proceedings and repealed Section 110 paragraph 1 subparagraph 1 and paragraph 4, as well as Section 111 para - graph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as unconstitutional. In this regard, the legislator was given a deadline of the end of 2024 to enact a new provision that complies with the frame - work set by the Austrian Constitutional Court. So far, a first draft of the repealed Sections has been produced, but was met with considerable criticism. Furthermore, the idea of a federal pub - lic prosecutor ( Bundesstaatsanwalt ) as the head of public prosecutors has been on the political agenda of many parties for some while. Time will tell how the new government will untangle this issue.
ment) and IV (International Co-operation) of the UNCAC. The following items were emphasised as strengths of national corruption provisions implementing the aforementioned chapters of the UNCAC: • the broad interpretation of the concept of “business activities” when applying; • the provision on bribery in the private sector; • the broad range of state authorities protected; • the availability of “extended forfeiture” for assets that are likely to be proceeds of crime if their legal origin cannot be proven to the satisfaction of the court; and • the fact that the Austrian legislation not only allows the jurisdiction to prosecute when extradition is denied due to nationality, but also allows such jurisdiction when extradition is denied for other reasons not related to the nature of the offences. However, a number of challenges were also noted in the context of implementing the Con - vention, consisting of an absence of measures to ensure the effectiveness of the domestic leg - islation on the criminal liability of legal persons, or measures to expand the protection of whis - tle-blowers in the private sector. Furthermore, a number of recommendations were made with regard to improvements to procedural law. For greater detail, see the United Nations Confer - ence of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, Implementation Review Group Fifth session, executive summary, CAC/COSP/IRG/I/3/1/Add.11.
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