Switzerland’s banking industry has been rattled by another scandal after one of its former top bosses was jailed for claiming nearly 200,000 Swiss francs (£165,000) on expenses to cover his visits to strip clubs.
Pierin Vincenz, the former chief executive of Raiffeisen Switzerland, made unlawful gains during his 15-year tenure by cashing in on 7.8m francs in side deals and claiming illegal expenses, including a 202,000 francs tab at a string of cabarets and strip clubs, prosecutors told the court.
Earlier this year Vincenz, who once won an award for being “banker of the year”, told the Zurich district court that his expenses bill for strip club visits was mostly business-related.
The 65-year-old also said that a 700 franc dinner he had with a woman he met on dating app Tinder was justified because he was considering her for a job, and a trip to Australia took place because he needed to examine the country’s cash machines.
The court heard that the bills he expensed included almost 4,000 francs for the repair of a hotel room at the five-star Zurich Park Hyatt that was damaged during a “massive row” he had with a strip club dancer he was dating.
It has been one of Switzerland’s highest-profile corporate crimes trials ever to take place, with Vincenz one of seven defendants who all denied the charges against them. Prosecutors had been seeking 70m francs in total in assets from the seven.
Vincenz was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail on Wednesday after being found guilty of multiple charges including embezzlement, fraud and forgery of documents. He was also fined 840,000 francs and ordered to pay nearly 1.6m francs in damages to compensate firms in which he was involved.
He has always denied the charges and his lawyer told the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger that the ruling is “wrong” and will be appealed.
The case is the latest scandal to hit Switzerland’s banking sector as one of its largest banks Credit Suisse reels from one crisis to the next.
It faced public embarrassment in 2019 when one of its top bankers was chased through the streets of Zurich by spies it hired to track him after he quit for rival UBS, a scandal that refused to go away after other instances of surveillance emerged.
It has since been rocked over its ties to Lex Greensill’s collapsed finance firm and the implosion of US hedge fund Archegos Capital Management as well as a huge data leak involving fresh accusations about its clients and the shock exit of its chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio after he was found to have broken Covid rules to watch the tennis at Wimbledon.
Raiffeisen Switzerland has taken note of the verdict of the Zurich District Court. Raiffeisen Switzerland is a private plaintiff and will file an appeal as a precautionary measure and determine the further course of action after analysing the written reasons for the verdict. As this is an ongoing proceeding, Raiffeisen Switzerland will not issue any further statement.
