Compensation for lawyers in Vincenz case: Cost of overturning the decision to taxpayers is 436,879 francs

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Even the defendants’ defense lawyers did not expect this: The economic case against former Raiffeisen boss Pierin Vincenz (67), his long-time business partner Beat Stocker (64) and five other defendants must be fully reopened.

This week, the Zurich High Court not only overturned the lower court’s decision but also sent the case back to the prosecution “due to serious procedural errors.”

This is a major defeat for chief inspector Marc Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel, 60, as well as for district judge Sebastian Aeppli, 65, who accepted the indictment.

The rejection is also partly good news for the defendant. The process is likely to be delayed for another two or three years.

Taxpayers in the canton of Zurich cover the costs

It cannot be ruled out that the Federal Court will not make a final decision this decade. Those involved will live in uncertainty for a long time. Additionally, Vincenz and Stocker’s assets have also been frozen for now.

Another loser is the public sector, or rather the taxpayers of the canton of Zurich. You have to pay not only the costs that the extra round will bring to the prosecutor’s office and the courts, but also the legal compensation of the parties involved.

And they have everything. Calculations made by Blick show that: The supreme court awarded the seven defendants and private plaintiffs Raiffeisen and Viseca a total of 436,879 francs for their costs related to the appeal process. Law firms were given hourly wages of 350 francs, including VAT, or even 377 francs. This is remarkable because official public defenders in the canton of Zurich are paid only 220 francs per hour. Will tax francs be distributed generously?

Defense lawyers’ salaries vary

The high court disagrees. When asked, a spokesman said: “Compensation was awarded in accordance with legal requirements.” Hourly fees for official defenses are not decisive for “requested defenses” and are “as a rule” the hourly fee agreed upon by the client with the defense lawyer.

The spokesperson also makes clear that the claimed expenses are viewed with a critical eye: “The court has sometimes made large deductions in cases where the court believed that unreasonably high compensation was being claimed.”

Even the lawyers’ claim to work for hours was not accepted by the court. However, compensation for individual defense attorneys varied widely. In some cases this is difficult to understand. For example, star lawyer Lorenz Erni (74), who represented the main defendant Vincenz, requested 92.05 hours of work for which he was awarded compensation of 34,698 francs.

Andreas Etter, co-founder of SME broker Investnet, on the other hand, was paid 75,390 francs for his two lawyers, more than twice as much, even though he was only a co-defendant and had to defend himself against significantly fewer claims. Than Vincenz.

The court justifies this by saying that the lawyers’ work was progressing “at different levels” at the time the rejection decision was made.

Source :Blick