Pierin Vincenz will be remanded in custody as prosecutors investigate private deals during his time as chief executive of retail lender Raiffeisen, a Swiss court said.
A magistrate court on Friday ordered well-known banker Pierin Vincenz remanded in custody, as prosecutors sift through evidence that he acted in bad faith in a series of deals when he was running Swiss retail lender Raiffeisen.
The news represents a breathtaking fall for a former star CEO and is a shock for the finance industry in Switzerland, where bankers have rarely been successfully prosecuted for white-collar crimes.
Vincenz has reportedly been in custody since investigators showed up at his rural Appenzell home on Tuesday and took him in for questioning. To keep suspects in custody, investigators have to convince the magistrate that they could collude or even abscond.
Single Cells
In Switzerland, suspects remanded in custody are usually held in a single cell and are allowed one hour at most outside. Their communications, even with defense lawyers, are tightly controlled, and they are generally only allowed weekly visits.
Zurich prosecutors are probing Vincenz, who was chief executive of Raiffeisen until three years ago, over suspected misdealings, the bank earlier this week. The probe centers on Aduno and Investnet, two Raiffeisen vehicles that Vincenz also personally invested in.
In a stunning reversal, the St. Gallen-based bank said it would join the probe as a private complainant as well as lodging a criminal complaint against Vincenz and further potentially involved persons.
Shocked, Surprised
The 61-year-old former banker denied the allegations of wrong-doing vehemently in a statement earlier this week, and said he had always acted in the interests of the firms he worked for. «It was a shock to have the police at my door yesterday morning. I am completely shocked and surprised by this criminal investigation,» Vincenz said, according to a statement sent to the media via a communications firm.
In 1999, Vincenz became chief executive of Raiffeisen, then a retail lender specialized in mortgages and small business loans. His vision was a Swiss universal bank based on the cooperative core business, while diversifying across the financial market. By 2014, the bank was one of a handful of systemically relevant firms for Switzerland, along UBS, Credit Suisse, and state-backed lender Zuercher Kantonalbank.
Suitability Questioned
Vincenz led Raiffeisen to snap up stakes in investment firms Aduno and Investnet, forge a tie-up with Swiss private bank Vontobel in 2004, buy the remaining parts of collapsed Swiss private bank Wegelin, and build up considerable stakes in software maker Avaloq, insurer Helvetia, and derivatives boutique Leonteq.
The stakes eventually led to trouble for Vincenz personally: he often invested personally alongside Raiffeisen's deals, blurring the lines on governance. This led Finma to briefly investigate his fitness and probity last year, but the Swiss regulator was forced to drop the probe shortly after because Vincenz ditched his last remaining finance job.
