The banker convicted of including strip clubs in corporate expenses

The former head of a Swiss bank was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on charges of fraud involving strip clubs.

The Zurich court found that Pierin Vincenz, 65, used the company’s credit card to pay for visits to strip clubs as well as Tinder appointments, vacation trips and dinners.

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

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

According to prosecutors, Vincenz and the former head of a credit card company, Beat Stocker, paid dozens of personal expenses with bank money.

Stocker was jailed for four years, and Vincenz — who has already been awarded Swiss banker of the year — was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

According to Swiss media, the judge ruled that Vincenz’s many visits to strip clubs were “not in the bank’s interest”.

Amounts of almost 200,000 Swiss francs (about R$ 1 million), from visits to strip clubs, were placed in the company’s expenses as if they were part of the business, reports the Reuters news agency.

A 700-franc meal with a woman Vincenz met via the dating app Tinder was described in bank accounts as a “job interview.”

BBC Switzerland correspondent Imogen Foulkes says the case involving a top executive has damaged the reputation of Raiffeisen, a small, cooperative bank with 200 branches serving local communities.

Now, says Foulkes, for many Swiss the case has become synonymous with a very careless approach to money on the part of a bank that should value just that.