Three years and nine months in prison – to be sure: On April 13, 2022, the Zurich District Court announced its verdict on Pierin Vincenz (66). However, there is no written justification for the summer that the head of the court, Sebastian Aeppli (64), has promised.
More than seven months after the verdict was announced in the spring, the former Raiffeisen boss and other defendants are still awaiting a detailed explanation, as they sometimes receive severe sentences.
The district court attributes the delay to the complexity of the case. A spokesperson said, “With dimensions such as the 364-page indictment and 526 federal files, the effort to pre-arrange the verdict cannot be evaluated at all.”
Judgment as long as “Lord of the Rings”
“NZZ am Sonntag” recently announced that the written decision will now be sent to the parties by the end of November. But the court doesn’t want to confirm that date to SonntagsBlick: “At the end of November it won’t be enough anymore,” the spokesperson said. The authority does not want to commit to a new deadline.
Some defense attorneys for Vincenz and Co. see the months-long delay as an indication that the written verdict still needs to be falsified to justify the already announced sentence. “When the decision was announced, the court already had a 500-page draft decision in front of it. Against this background, one wonders what else has been done, ”said a lawyer involved in the case.
The court doesn’t want to say anything about the details of the decision, but the spokesperson can gather information later: “The verdict went from 500 pages to 1,000 pages.” 1000 pages – that’s almost as much as JRR Tolkien needs for his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Do not offer an attack surface
But that doesn’t really affect lawyers who aren’t involved in the case: “It’s not surprising that in a major economic process, the verdict is 1,000 pages or more,” says Adrian Ettwein (59), who was federal prosecutor from 2002 to 2015. criminal organisations, stock market and economic crime area.
The district judges’ obsession with writing has a simple reason: They want to make sure Vincenz and his partner, Beat Stocker, 62, really should go to jail. Adrian Ettwein: “The court must make sure that the decision is not open to attack – otherwise it will be overturned by the next instance.”
Former prosecutor Ettwein was not surprised by the long wait for the verdict. This is not unusual, especially in complex economic situations.