Pierin Vincenz: Swiss banker claimed costs for strip-club visits

The former chief of a Swiss bank was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on fraud-related charges.

Pierin Vincenz, 65, was charged with using his business credit card to pay for strip clubs, Tinder dates, vacations, and dinners.

The case generated such public interest that the trial was relocated from a Zurich courthouse to a concert hall.

Vincenz and his co-defendant, who was the chief executive of Raiffeisen Bank, will appeal the verdict.

Prosecutors allege that Vincenz and a former credit card firm executive, Beat Stocker, padded their coffers by acquiring holdings in companies in which they had secretly amassed stakes.

Stocker was sentenced to four years in prison, while Vincenz – who was once named Switzerland’s banker of the year – was condemned to three years and nine months in prison.

According to Swiss media, the judge determined that Vincenz’s frequent visits to strip clubs were not in the bank’s best interests.

Bills of roughly 200,000 Swiss francs ($214,000; £165,000) for strip club visits were classified as business costs, according to Reuters.

Supper with a woman he met on Tinder for 700 francs was reportedly described as a “job interview.”

According to Imogen Foulkes, the BBC’s correspondent in Switzerland, the high-profile case has harmed Raiffeisen, which was formerly a little cooperative bank with 200 branches serving local communities. Now, she argues, it has become synonymous with sleaze and an extremely careless attitude toward money for many Swiss.

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