NEUMEISTER v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT 29 proceedings in question (statement of the facts, paragraph 20). It recalls that it was necessary to seek judicial assistance abroad and to request the extradition of several accused. Because of the size and complexity of the transactions in dispute the enquiries and interrogations conducted outside Austria took a long time and in some cases required the personal participation of the Investigating Judge. Moreover, in some of the countries approached, especially Switzerland, the request for legal assistance raised legal problems, the solution of which also caused loss of time. The Commission’s report is said not to mention these facts, without which neither the complexity of the case nor the obstacles encountered by the Investigating Judge can be properly assessed. The Government lastly regrets that here, too, the Commission has taken into consideration only the number of other accused, not their conduct during the proceedings. 25. With regard to the sixth criterion the facts found by the Commission are said to be inadequate to justify its conclusion. In the first place, the Commission is thought to have underestimated the part played by the preliminary investigation in Austrian criminal procedure. The Government points out that the object of the "Voruntersuchung" is to establish the material facts. It follows that in complicated and difficult criminal cases a fairly long preliminary investigation and thus a fairly long detention on remand are often inevitable. The Commission is also said not to have evaluated the facts of the case properly. It has, it is argued, worked on the assumption that it would have been possible to release the Investigating Judge from all other work so that he could devote himself solely to the investigation of the Applicant’s case. But under Austrian legislation (Section 87 (3) of the Constitution, Section 18 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 34 (1) of the Judicature Act and Section 17 (5) of the Rules adopted by the Ministry of Justice for courts of first and second Instance) the allocation of criminal cases cannot be changed in the course of a year just because one judge is overworked. However, the Government points out that the Presiding Judge and the "Staff Chamber" (Personalsenat) of the Regional Criminal Court of Vienna, anxious to lighten the burden on the Investigating Judge, on many occasions allotted to other judges cases that normally should have gone to him, taking full advantage of the law in force for that purpose (between 1 and 30 June 1959, between 1 December 1960 and 31 May 1961, between 18 September 1961 and 31 July 1962, between 1 October and 31 December 1962 and between 15 May and 30 September 1963). The Investigating Judge, when heard by the Commission as a witness, in fact stated that if he had not had to deal with several cases at the same time, the investigation of the Neumeister case would have been shortened but that the time saved would have been so minimal as to be hardly worth mentioning. In considering the attitude of the authorities responsible for the investigation the Commission is said to have based its findings on the