ZURICH, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Former Raiffeisen Bank CEO Pierin Vincenz appeared in a Zurich court on Monday as an appeal \u200copened into his 2022 conviction on fraud charges in what \u200cwas one of the most sensational corporate trials in recent Swiss history. <\/p>\n
Judges are examining allegations \u200bthat Vincenz and business partner Beat Stocker illicitly enriched themselves through company acquisitions by taking stakes in firms before having them bought by Raiffeisen or a payments firm called Aduno. <\/p>\n
The Zurich high court will also look \u200cagain at Vincenz’s expenses, after \u2060prosecutors accused him of misusing corporate credit cards to spend thousands of Swiss francs in Switzerland’s red-light districts, \u2060in strip clubs, on Dubai trips and a Tinder date billed to the bank. <\/p>\n
Vincenz and Stocker have consistently denied wrongdoing. Vincenz argued at the original \u200btrial \u200bthat the money was spent on \u200bmanaging business relationships. <\/p>\n
However, a Zurich \u200cdistrict court ruled that the spending was not in the bank’s interest. In April 2022, the court found Vincenz guilty of fraud, unfaithful business management and passive bribery, sentencing him to three years and nine months in prison. <\/p>\n
Stocker received four years. <\/p>\n
The Zurich high court in 2024 overturned \u200cthe conviction on procedural grounds, but Switzerland’s \u200bFederal Supreme Court revived the verdict, paving \u200bthe way for the appeal. <\/p>\n
Proceedings \u200bare set to run through August 21 due to \u200cthe size of the case \u200bfiles and its complexity. \u200bIf that is not enough, more dates have been set for late August and early September. <\/p>\n
Vincenz, 70, remains at liberty pending \u200ba definitive decision. <\/p>\n
The case \u200ccould rumble on for a long time since any high \u200bcourt ruling can be appealed again to the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n
(Writing \u200bby Dave GrahamEditing by Keith Weir) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Former Raiffeisen Bank CEO Pierin Vincenz appeared in a Zurich court on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[55381,26649,17,55397],"class_list":["post-113761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-beat-stocker","tag-raiffeisen-bank","tag-switzerland","tag-vincenz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117072459454157052","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}