Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria's former vice chancellor | Alex Domanski/Getty Images Austria’s Strache wins EU Parliament seat despite scandal: reports The ex-vice chancellor has received more than 35,000 votes.

Austria's former vice chancellor and far-right party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has won a seat in the European Parliament despite being forced to resign over a scandal this month, local media reported.

Strache resigned one week before the European election after a secretly recorded video emerged showing him attempting to trade lucrative government contracts for campaign donations from a woman he believed to be a wealthy Russian.

On the candidate list of his far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Strache was ranked in 42nd place — a position described by Austrian media as a "pro-forma candidacy," as such a low placement usually means the candidate is highly unlikely to win a seat.

Yet Austrian electoral law has given Strache a boost. Austria, like several other EU member states, uses a preferential list system — meaning that voters can influence the order of the party's list.

In Austria's case, if a candidate secures more than 5 percent of the votes received by their party, they rise to the top of the list.

Austria's Kleine Zeitung reported that in order to surpass the threshold, Strache needed about 33,000 so-called "preference votes" and that so far, he had already received about 37,000 votes. Some votes in Austria are yet to be counted as of Monday afternoon.

The FPÖ suffered only a minor setback despite the scandal engulfing the party, coming in third place with 17.2 percent of the vote according to preliminary results. That means the party wins three seats, one of which could go to Strache.

It's not certain, however, whether Strache will take up his seat. Some Austrian politicians have called on the ex-vice chancellor to turn down the position.

Claudia Gamon, an incoming Austrian MEP of the liberal NEOS party, told the Austrian Press Agency on Monday: "Someone who is suspected of corruption has no business being in politics."

Strache denies any wrongdoing in the video affair.