Chechnya’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, ordered the kidnapping of a Chechen whistle-blower in Vienna last year, in which the man was fatally shot, Austria’s counterterrorism department concluded after a yearlong investigation. The nation’s public prosecutor’s office released the news on Tuesday.

Mr. Kadyrov, who is supported by the Kremlin and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has denied any role in the killing of the whistle-blower, Umar S. Israilov, who was living in exile when he was fatally shot last year.

But the Austrian government’s investigators concluded that Mr. Kadyrov ordered that Mr. Israilov be kidnapped, and that the group of Chechens who tried to snatch Mr. Israilov from a Viennese street botched the job. One of them shot Mr. Israilov after he broke free and tried to escape, the investigators found.

Their conclusions, pointed and direct but based largely on circumstantial evidence, shift the focus now to Austria’s federal prosecutors’ office, which has been preparing indictments.