Three years and nine months in prison – absolutely. That was the Zurich district court’s decision in mid-April 2022 for former Raiffeisen boss Pierin Vincenz (66). Long-time business partner Beat Stocker (62), former CEO of credit card company Aduno, was sentenced to four years in prison, again without probation.
District Judge Sebastian Aeppli, 64, and his colleagues presented the written justification for the sentence this week. The 1,200-page study shows that the most serious breaches of law were committed with the acquisition of SME investment firm Investnet. The court justified more than half of Vincenz and Stocker’s imprisonment with the case, which at the time covered the economic process of the decade.
It all started with a payment of CHF 2.9 million that Stocker transferred to Vincenz’s account at Raiffeisenbank Lugano on July 3, 2015. A few months later, Lukas Hässig became aware of the transaction and seemed rather suspicious to the owner of the “Inside Paradeplatz” financial portal: Hässig knew that Raiffeisen, headed by Vincenz, had bought Investnet just a few weeks before the transfer. and it turned out that Stocker had signed the deal.
“There is no connection”
Was the transfer of 2.9 million francs part of this deal? Was the Raiffeisen boss secretly involved in Investnet, the company he later took over with the cooperative bank? “Is there a link?” Hässig asked Vincenz. he asked.
The top banker vehemently denied: “No connection. This question is a scandal in itself. Mr. Stocker gave me a private loan to buy a house.”
On April 7, 2016, Hässig made the “explosive payout” public, prompting other media outlets, related companies, the Financial Market Authority (Finma) and law enforcement to start dealing with what was going on.
Money used to buy stocks
Vincenz and Stocker always argued that the 2.9 million was a debt even before the district court – but the court did not believe the defendant. In the decision, “credit scenario” is evaluated as “advanced fiction”. The court agreed that Vincenz had used part of the nearly two million francs to purchase a property in Ticino. However, he pointed out that “by far the full amount of money” was not used for the property purchase. Instead, the funds were used for other purchases, such as share purchases.
The judges split the claims of the former Raiffeisen boss: “If the accused Vincenz states in this context that funds have also been received for a possible refurbishment of the property, there are no convincing indications for this version, especially since a comprehensive renovation would have cost CHF 1 million, not nearly round. and, as the accused must confess at the main hearing, such a renewal was never planned, not done, after receiving the money.”
The decision also cites a phone call tapped on February 21, 2018, as “a strong indication of sub-participation”. Stocker is here several times not only for the proceeds from the sale of Investnet, but also for Vincenz.
“Armstrong’s Action”
Description of the speech: “1. we got 5.9 million (…) in tranche, 2.9 million of which went to you from tranche 1 … celebrities … plus 0.8 these are miscellaneous loans and invoices from Peter (… ) you get more benefits on a fifty percent basis. The following model will now be ideal in our internal relationship. (…) If we had found such a solution with 7.5 million loans from my tranche 3, we would have created equity among ourselves on the one hand, and saved for future cash flows on the other. is necessary.”
According to the court, the phone call shows how Stocker sought ways to give Vincenz half of the money that had flowed to him and would have flown in a roundabout way. Direct transfers were no longer possible due to the ongoing Finma process.
The conversation was barely recorded. In the first trial, the prosecution was not allowed to monitor Vincenz and Stocker’s phones. As can be seen from the decision, the so-called “Armstrong Action” was rejected by the Supreme Court of the Canton of Zurich in a decision of January 30, 2018. On February 12, the Supreme Court gave the green light, but a week later, when the prosecutor’s office filed another application for surveillance. Less than ten days later, investigators recorded the important conversation.
Success on second request
The files do not definitively explain why the Supreme Court initially did not want to authorize the wiretapping operation, but the suspicion arises that the initial application relates to facts that happened so long ago, and therefore the court assumed that tracing would be unlikely. to additional evidence.
The public prosecutor then justified his second surveillance application with the Investnet transaction and was successful.
In a few months, the Vincenz case is likely to come before the Zurich Supreme Court. All parties have already announced that they will appeal the district court’s decision at the next stage. The results of the wiretapping operation will likely be a problem again.
The defense circle complained that the district court had little or no consideration of the exculpatory materials collected during the telephone monitoring.