Nearly nine months after the verbal judgment filed against former Raiffeisen boss Pierin Vincenz and other suspects for alleged multimillion-euro fraud, the Zurich District Court is now sending its written reasoning. The document consists of 1200 pages.
At the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency, the district court said the decision would be served to those involved in the case this week. The verdict will not be sent to the media for several weeks as the court is still anonymized. Thus, it obscures the names of those on 1,200 pages.
3 years 9 months
The substantive cornerstones of the decision have been known since the decision was announced in April 2022. Pierin Vincenz was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months of unconditional imprisonment. Former Aduno boss Beat Stocker will be sentenced to 4 years in prison. In the process, Vincenz and Stocker were accused of fraud in takeovers, among other things.
Three of the defendants, who were said to have assisted Vincenz and Stocker in their illegal proceedings, were sentenced to conditional fines. One defendant was acquitted.
The court dropped the trial against another defendant due to his advanced illness. The 69-year-old died a few weeks ago in December 2022.
Getting involved in companies secretly
Now that the written reasoning is available, the parties have 30 days to formally appeal the decision to the Zurich Supreme Court. When the decision was announced orally, all of the convicts announced that they would continue the decision. It is not yet clear when the appeal hearing will take place.
The public prosecutor accused Vincenz and Stocker of secretly participating in the companies and then having those companies acquired by Raiffeisen or the credit card company Aduno. The duo is said to have pocketed millions.
In its decision, the court also criticized Vincenz’s method of accounting for expenditures. Many visits to Swiss strip clubs and cabarets were “not in Raiffeisen’s interest”.
Tour de Suisse passing through the red light district
The notion that all expenses go under expenses “clearly goes too far”. At the opening of the resolution, he said that even maintaining relationships has its limits. The prosecution summarized this part of the allegations as “a Tour de Suisse passing through the red light zone”.
Vincenz was acquitted on individual points. The Zurich district court’s decision fell far short of the six-year prison sentence the prosecutor had requested. (pbe/SDA)