CEO’s XXXcuse
Strip club $$ a biz expense: banker
A onetime Swiss banking CEO who is on trial for fraud now says that the nearly $220,000 he spent at strip clubs was a legitimate business expense.
Pierin Vincenz, the former head of the bank Raiffeisen Switzerland, who was once honored as “banker of the year,” also claimed in a Swiss court that he spent $760 on dinner with a woman he met on Tinder because he was thinking of hiring her for a real estate job.
Stripper fight
Meanwhile, Swiss prosecutors have also alleged that Vincenz ran up a $4,500 hotel bill that included repairs to the room after he and a stripper he was dating at the time got into a “massive” fight that caused significant damage.
Vincenz’s former company also says that the ex-CEO spent $30,000 of company money to take a cooking-club trip to Mallorca, a Spanish island, on a private jet, according to Reuters.
Vincenz is one of seven top bankers and associates on trial in Zurich for alleged enrichment, fraud and mismanagement.
It is alleged that Vincenz used his position to make secret side deals in addition to those made officially between Raiffeisen and other parties between 2006 and 2017.
Prosecutors want the 65year-old Vincenz and his co-defendants to pay restitution totaling $77 million and serve six years in prison.
‘Illegal trades’
All seven who have been charged are denying the allegations.
The trial has attracted intense media scrutiny in Switzerland. The press interest was so great that authorities needed to relocate the trial from a local courthouse in Zurich to a large theater.
Raiffeisen isn’t listed on a public stock exchange and is sometimes mistaken for Raiffeisen Bank International of Vienna, according to Bloomberg.
Most of the charges Vincenz faces relate to allegations of illegal trades while he was chief executive of unlisted cooperative lender Raiffeisen Switzerland. But the opening day of his trial centered on the banker’s alleged misuse of the expense account.
“With regard to [visits] to bars and nightclubs, I fully stand by that these were justified by business,” said Vincenz, sporting a white open-necked shirt and a dark suit, his light gray hair tightly cropped.