Federal Criminal Police Office (Austria)

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AustriaAustria  Federal Criminal Police Office
Austrian Authority
BMI BK Logo 2019.png
State level Federation
Position of the authority Organizational unit of the General Directorate for Public Security
At sight federal Ministry of Internal Affairs
founding January 1, 2002
Headquarters Vienna 9 , Federal Office Building Josef-Holaubek-Platz
Authority management Director Franz Lang
Servants about 700
Website www.bundeskriminalamt.at
Federal Office Building Josef-Holaubek-Platz, seat of the Federal Criminal Police Office

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BK) in Austria is the central office for the nationwide fight against crime and international police cooperation. As an organizational unit with limited autonomy, it is attached to the Ministry of the Interior and is not an independent authority.

The headquarters of the Federal Criminal Police Office is the Federal Office building at Josef-Holaubek-Platz in Vienna- Alsergrund . In addition, there are changing "branch offices" where individual departments are based due to lack of space or for reasons of confidentiality. Plans to gather all the departments at one location (e.g. at the Security Academy in Traiskirchen / Lower Austria) have repeatedly failed, either because the structural adaptation (data lines etc.) would have been too expensive or because the organizational structure changed (e.g. . Increase in the anti-smuggling office in the course of the refugee movement in 2015). The number of Austrian BK liaison officers abroad and foreign ones in Austria has risen sharply over the past decade due to globalization and the close international networking of criminal organizations. The task of the liaison officers is to efficiently coordinate police operations between two or more countries, to speed up processes and to overcome language barriers.

history

The office was originally the organizational unit "Group D" of the Ministry of the Interior and was renamed in 2003 based on the German model by the Federal Criminal Police Office Act and provided with limited autonomy (e.g. with an independent budget).

In 2020, Gerhard Lang took over the management of the BK on an interim basis. The previous incumbent BK boss Michael Fischer moved to the Lower Austrian regional clinic holding. Franz Lang , the previous director of the BK, switched to the General Directorate for Public Security .

Internet presence

The Federal Criminal Police Office uses the homepage of its intranet as a news portal that is generally accessible and is managed by the press office. The bandwidth of the messages ranges from warnings about Internet scams to statements of the interior minister on current events.

In November 2009 the Federal Criminal Police Office decided to set up a Facebook presence, which went online on November 27, 2009. The first substantive entry dates from December 19, 2009. The aim of the website is to present the prevention work in a way that is close to the people. The first topics discussed included Christmas tree fires, theft, burglary during winter holidays and pickpockets . New information and help are regularly posted on the internet platform, which had around 30,000 likes in the summer of 2013.

organization

The Federal Criminal Police Office is subordinate to the General Directorate for Public Security , Section II in the Ministry of the Interior, and is headed by a director. Since 2008 this is General Franz Lang . There are currently around 700 employees in the Federal Criminal Police Office. The Federal Criminal Police Office is divided into seven departments, these into offices and these in turn into sections.

  • Department 1: Criminal Strategy and Central Administration
  • Department 2: International Police Cooperation
  • Department 3: Investigations, Organized and General Crime
  • Department 4: Criminal Analysis
  • Department 5: Criminal Police Assistance Services
  • Department 6: Forensics and Technology
  • Department 7: White-collar crime

tasks

With the formation of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the criminal police structures in the Ministry of the Interior should be upgraded and professionalized. It is to be seen in connection with further organizational changes, such as the establishment of state criminal investigation offices and the amalgamation of the gendarmerie and police in 2005. Like Group D in the past, the Federal Criminal Police Office functions as the Austrian state central office of Interpol and the national office of Europol , the Schengen information system ("SIRENE-Büro" = Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry) and the Egmont Group (FIU = Financial Intelligence Unit ).

The Federal Criminal Police Office is not a pure coordination body (like the national Interpol office in the USA), but is operational. All formal contacts between Austrian security authorities and foreign ones must go through the Federal Criminal Police Office and may not be handled directly by subordinate police stations. Several reporting offices have been set up in the Federal Criminal Police Office (e.g. for money laundering, internet crime and child pornography). The Office for Target Investigation searches for serious criminals who have gone into hiding in a targeted manner and the Office for "Cold Case Management" rolls up old cases that could not be resolved so far, for example because in earlier times there were no international DNA databases for the comparison of Crime scene evidence was available.

Name abbreviation

The abbreviation "BK" was chosen to avoid confusion with the Federal Chancellery , which is abbreviated to "BKA".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Burgenländer heads the Federal Criminal Police Office. In: ORF.at . April 2, 2020, accessed May 28, 2020 .