As a humanitarian aid organization Rahma Austria, we would like to inform the public about the latest investigations and completed legal proceedings against our organization.
Since 2006 we have been providing humanitarian aid in Europe, Asia and Africa as a association registered with the Vienna Register. As part of this activity, we built numerous fountains, solar systems, schools, clinics, a senior center and a speech therapy center, built container settlements and desalination plants for earthquake victims and support thousands of orphans and refugees so that they can lead a decent life.
We currently provide this humanitarian aid in 20 countries, in war, natural disaster and crisis areas and finance our projects exclusively by supporting our donors. We never used financial support from the Austrian or another state and have always worked as an independent and civilian humanitarian aid organization.
Nevertheless, in November 2020 we were confronted with the accusation of terrorist financing in the Middle East as part of the “Operation Luxor”. In September 2023, however, the Graz Higher Regional Court found that these allegations lacked any basis because they had been raised without any evidence and hired the procedure. However, while we continued our work without interruption, a new investigation was initiated by the Graz public prosecutor in February 2024, this time with the allegation of money laundering and embezzlement.
During these investigations, hundreds of our donors were charged by the police as witnesses, the bank accounts of our association were closed on the banks due to the pressure and the existing donations were confiscated by the prosecutor. In October 2024, however, all seized donations were released by a high judge decision and returned to our association. In January 2025, the public prosecutor responsible for the “Operation Luxor” retired and on February 27, 2025, all investigations against Rahma Austria were hired. Our confiscated donations were transferred to our ongoing projects and distributed to the needy according to their original purpose.
In our knowledge, a humanitarian organization in Austria has never been treated in this way. Unfortunately, those who were most affected by this process are people in difficult life situations who receive help from our organization, our donors and our employees and are often dependent on it.
We know that this pressure against Rahma Austria is primarily due to our solidarity with the Palestinian people, which has been suffering from war and oppression for many years. However, as we have always said, we only provide humanitarian aid. We will continue this necessary work and remind you that Palestine and Gaza need our help more than ever.
After all, all allegations against Rahma Austria have proven to be unfounded. As we already explained in our press conference on May 23, 2024, we promised to legally defend every cent of our donors with all the means that are available to us. We kept our promise and re -transferred the return funds received to our aid projects.
We thank everyone with empathy, civil courage and conscience in Austrian society, especially our donors who have shown themselves to us in solidarity with us during this difficult time, and those judges who finally still ensured justice.