Bundesliga: Negotiation crime in the LASK case begins

Due to the volume of files, no judgment is expected on Wednesday, the Bundesliga emphasized last week. The LASK, which had been transferred on May 14 with an illegally installed camera, had shown itself ruefully the next day and admitted four forbidden team training sessions. Last week, the Upper Austrians also included allegedly incriminating photographic material from the competition in their statement to the Senate 1.

In the event of a conviction, the relevant paragraph 111a of the ÖFB’s Code of Justice (“Violation of the Fair Play Concept”) provides the following sanction options: a) warning; b) blocking of one to twelve competitive matches; c) Function lockout from one month to one year; d) a fine of up to 15,000 euros; e) staging of one or more games excluding some or all of the public; f) deduction of points; g) exclusion of competition; h) forced descent; i) Exclusion from the association. In the days after it became known, the competition sometimes demanded draconian punishments.

“We are in a good legal position”

“I think we are in a good legal position,” emphasized LASK President Siegmund Gruber in that hastily convened press conference, in which the athletes in the person of Vice President Jürgen Werner (“That was nonsense”) and coach Valerien Ismael (“A Errors and that’s what we stand for ”) apologized. “We didn’t do it because we wanted to gain an advantage, but we looked at the health of the players because they had to play for a lot of English weeks,” said Werner. Gruber, who had suspended his function as a member of the Bundesliga supervisory board, does not want to be informed of the Bundesliga until the day the proceedings were initiated.

Gruber, who at the time also confirmed LASK considerations for a training camp in Sweden because of fewer restrictions, indicated at this time that the club would also have been sent photos that did not comply with the government’s ordinance on small group training during training be. An incident at Rapid Wien, which was also captured with a camera due to a media appointment, was an excuse, but sometimes did not result in a trial. The Bundesliga board member Christian Ebenbauer saw the recordings that the LASK had submitted less dramatically. When asked by ORF whether an earthquake was still possible, he said: “In my view, less.”

Experts expect severe punishment

Senate 1, which is composed of eight lawyers as a criminal and authentication committee, could reach a result on Wednesday, but this is not to be expected due to the size of the files. The majority of other lawyers expect a severe punishment, the Viennese lawyer Wolfgang Rebernig, shortly after the case became known, considered a fine deduction as the most realistic option.

The sports lawyer Thomas Wallentin, who worked as a mediator at the International Sports Court in Lausanne, recently noted in the “Kurier” interview a “relatively large degree of discretion”, since there had been no comparable case in the past, but he assumes a “very sensitive” penalty . However, an assessment is difficult. “It is very difficult to predict. There could be a deduction of six to twelve points and a substantial fine. ”

Competition demands “draconian punishment”

The competition in the form of the other eleven Bundesliga teams required a hard punishment for the front-runner almost every day – in rare agreement, the two major Vienna clubs Rapid and Austria. Austria board member Markus Kraetschmer spoke about “a draconian punishment”. The league had previously worked for weeks “for a solidarity and a concept”, “but the procedure of the LASK was to systematically break the rules. So I also expect the Senate to deal with the whole matter properly and to issue a draconian punishment as a clear signal. ”

The LASK itself has not made public statements since that press conference. In the event of a conviction, it is generally expected that the Bundesliga will resume on June 2nd or 3rd, the LASK can become active with the protest committee, as the final instance would be the Permanent Neutral Arbitration Panel. The LASK has already emphasized that it does not want to lengthen the cause unnecessarily. But that will probably depend on the result of the Senate. The new beginning of the Bundesliga starts with a crime thriller away from the grass.

–