Raiffeisen –Tarnished Leader – Whistleblowing victory
Follow the money and follow the intimidation.....
Raiffeisen Bank in Basel has an automated safety deposit box system. Customers were sold the idea of safety together with 24 hour access. That was until the first week of March 2018 when robbers apparently plundered 22 of these safety deposit boxes, emptied with no apparent damage to the boxes. Raiffeisen currently says “not our problem, Insurance is up to the customer”. Do they realise what a statement like this does to their image? Raiffeisen also in March send mortage holders completely wrong invoices.
These events are indicative of something but just the side-show to the main event:
The former Raiffeisen CEO Pierin Vincenz has now been in custody for 2 weeks while investigations continue into allegations that he improperly enriched himself through alleged insider deals.
This ball was set in motion by a whistleblower to the finance portal “Inside Paradeplatz”.
Lukas Hässig, the “Inside Paradeplatz” operator had learned that on 3 July 2015 Vincenz had received a transfer of 2.9 million Swiss francs from his account at Raiffeisen Bank in Lugano. The money came from Beat Stocker, the former CEO of the credit card company Aduno, a 25 percent subsidiary of Raiffeisen. Stocker is a longtime business partner and friend of Vincenz - and now like him sits in custody.
Mr. Hässig was suspicious of this transaction. Because he knew that Raiffeisen had bought the investment company Investnet and that Stocker had forged this deal. Mr. Hässig asked Vincenz in an SMS what this 2.9 million Swiss franc payment was. Vinzenz replied that it was a private loan for a home purchase. Pierin Vincenz was rightly angry that the leak regarding this payment was a violation of bank secrecy, a fair point. However he then threatened Mr. Hässig. This was a bad move.
Mr. Hässig was not intimidated by this threat, but it was the type of threat that heightens the realisation that one is onto something. Mr. Hässig therefore went public with this payment on his "Inside Paradeplatz" website. A decision of tremendous significance, as it started the ball of truth rolling.
The Raiffeisen board seemed to be disconnected from their duties, and though Raiffeisen Switzerland commissioned an investigation from the law firm Prager Dreifuss in the autumn of 2016, after an in depth internal investigation, “nothing tangible” was found! However an investigation from the Swiss Financial Market Authority (Finma) had also been triggered, and they were undertaking their own investigation.
Mr. Hässig had already discovered other new questionable payments regarding other acquisitions.
Vincenz and Stocker began a litany of threats against Mr. Hässig, and he faced a few turbulent months: "Since the summer of 2016, I continually received the same threat from the legal team of Vincenz and Stocker, including a lawsuit for bank secrecy infringement and claims for damages."
Until in the late summer of 2017 there was a kind of stalemate, until a small misconstruction in wording of an article on “Inside Paradeplatz”. Vincenz and Stocker immediately obtain a super-provisional order from the Zurich Commercial Court. Hässig has to delete the article - and he faced a claim for damages of 100’000 CHF.
This was followed by negotiations for an out-of-court settlement. "In these talks, Vincenz and Stocker insisted that all important articles regarding these payments be deleted forever," said Hässig.
Mr. Hässig in defense threatened to lay criminal charges against Vincenz and Stocker. The two then relented. The compromise agreement reached was that Mr. Hässig would in future to publish no further articles on the topics Commtrain and Investnet, which are "in the past or thematically concern the past". If Mr. Hässig breached the agreement he faced a penalty of 50,000 CHF.
However, when Finma begins their investigation in November 2017, Mr. Hässig publishes news on Vincenz and Stocker again. He justifies this since that new coverage is related to a new situation that lied outside the previous agreement. Vincenz and Stocker evidently saw it differently and dispatch their lawyers again who warned Mr. Hässig several times.
But now, with Vincenz and Stocker in custody, they have time to contemplate their intimidation of Lukas Hässig and how this escalated their problems. It seems now, as well, that Lukas Hässig and "Inside Paradeplatz", may be the least of their worries.
The latest news that is being reported is that Mr. Vincenz is allegedly fast becoming persona non grata among all the foundations and companies where he has a mandate, and these are being quickly withdrawn from him.
