NEUMEISTER v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT 11 The Vienna Economic Police addressed to the Regional Criminal Court, on 13 November 1963, a confidential report from which it appeared that Maria Neumeister had unsuccessfully sought to obtain part of that sum from a former client of the Iteka and Scherzinger firms. 18. Some days earlier - on 6 November 1963, two days after the closing of the preliminary investigation (paragraphs 19 and 20 infra) - Dr. Michael Stern, attorney, had made, on Neumeister’s behalf, a fourth request for provisional release. In it, he briefly repeated the arguments developed in the preceding requests, emphasised that the period during which the Applicant had been held on remand was already almost twenty months, and suggested a bank guarantee of one million schillings. In the course of the proceedings before the Commission, Neumeister stated that this last offer was made against his wishes as he was not, at that time, in a position to raise a guarantee for such a large sum. By a letter of 14 April 1964, Dr. Stern confirmed that in this matter he had acted on his own initiative. Before the Commission, the Government’s representatives observed that the offer was binding on Neumeister and that the competent courts had no reason to believe that it did not express Neumeister’s own wishes. The Investigating Judge rejected the request on 5 December 1963. Referring to the decisions of 31 July 1962, 10 September 1962, 27 December 1962, 19 February 1963 and 8 August 1963, he held that the Applicant had failed to bring forward any facts or arguments which could justify his release. Neumeister attacked this decision on 13 December 1963. He once more denied that any danger of flight existed; in his view the Regional Criminal Court of Vienna and the Vienna Court of Appeal had never evaluated correctly the facts which were relevant to this point, had based themselves on vague presumptions rather than solid proof and had mistakenly attached decisive importance to the enormous loss allegedly caused to the State. He complained in particular that the Regional Criminal Court had failed, in its decision of 5 December, to take into account the length of the detention on remand which he had already undergone. In conclusion, the appeal repeated the offer of a bank guarantee of one million schillings. The Judges’ Chamber of the Regional Criminal Court of Vienna allowed the appeal on 8 January 1964. It recognised that the Applicant’s arguments carried a certain weight: recalling that Neumeister faced a sentence of five to ten years’ severe imprisonment, it observed that it was uncertain as to whether he would benefit from the law providing for cases involving extenuating circumstances (außerordentliches Milderungsrecht, Section 265 (a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure) but that the length of detention on remand would, in all probability, be deducted from the sentence in the event of a conviction (Section 55 (a) of the Criminal Code) and that the inducement to flee was thereby considerably lessened (wesentlich