VIENNA: An Austrian court has lifted a freeze on the assets of the wife of a former US ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, imposed during a money-laundering probe, officials said Friday.

A Vienna court ruled there were “not sufficient grounds” to block several bank accounts belonging to the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, court spokesman Bernhard Hinger told AFP.

Lawyers for Afghan-born Khalilzad, who served as US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003-5 and then in Iraq until 2007, had said Monday it was “unclear” why the accounts were blocked in the first place.

The US Justice Department had merely made a request to Austria for information and no charges had been brought against Khalilzad or his wife Cheryl Benard, the lawyers had said.

“The (request) does not contain evidence of money laundering or other offences on the part of Ambassador Khalilzad or Ms. Benard,” lawyers Robert Buehler and Holger Bielesz said. The freezing in February of the accounts only became public this week after Austrian magazine Profil got hold of court documents that had been thrown away in a rubbish bin in Vienna.

The magazine said that the investigation centers on the alleged 2012 transfer of $1.4 million from Iraq and the UAE to accounts in the US and Austria.

Seven accounts in Benard’s name, a US-Austrian citizen, containing some 780,000 euros ($1.0 million), were then frozen by Austrian authorities, Profil reported.