Irish magnate jailed in Zurich over €4million embezzlement

IRISH businessman Peter Conlon has been jailed for embezzlement in Switzerland.

The tech magnate pleaded guilty at a hearing in Zurich last Wednesday to using almost €4million intended for charities to fund his own donations technology company.

He was sentenced to three years in prison with the last two suspended and will be released on December 22 having served a year after being arrested at Zurich airport in 2017.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that 64-year-old Conlon was also accused of denying bankruptcy, recklessly granting credit and favouring a creditor – and that a plea bargain-type arrangement allowed for an abbreviated hearing.

Conlon admitted embezzling 4.39million Swiss francs, equivalent to €3.9million, through his company Ammado. He founded the tech firm in 2005 in Dublin, and it developed a system to handle charity donations.

Ammado, which was liquidated in January, processed €11.2million of donations in 2015, €7.4million in 2016 and €5.8million in 2017.

But the 7.5% fee it took was not enough to cover the cost of running its offices in Ireland, Switzerland and Serbia, and it started using charity funds to cover expenses.

Affected charities include the International Federation of the Red Cross, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Caritas Internationalis, and the Save the Children Fund.

In February, the IFRC confirmed it had made a criminal complaint against Ammado. In a statement, it said Ammado had failed to pay approximately 1.8million Swiss francs (€1.6million) ‘donated via its platform to IFRC’. It added: ‘In September 2017, following repeated unsuccessful efforts to secure the funds owed to it by Ammado, IFRC filed a criminal complaint against Ammado with the Swiss authorities.’

An IFRC spokesman said last week: ‘We are happy with the judgment, and thank the authorities for their diligence and professionalism.’