Behring handed stiff prison sentence
Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court sentenced former financier Dieter Behring to five-and-a-half years in prison on Friday, as punishment for fraud and money laundering.
Sixty-one-year-old Behring, from Basel, can still appeal the decision.
He was accused of abusing the trust of nearly 2,000 investors between September 1998 and October 2004, having promised them windfall returns if they used his self-developed financial software. The software was designed to analyse stock market activity, but the scheme fell through and Behring ended up losing CHF 800 million ($827 million).
The sentence follows a long and convoluted legal process, with Behring originally having been arrested in October 2004, released in April 2005, and re-arrested in March 2007. He was again released upon payment of CHF1 million bail and confiscation of his passport.
Behring has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings.
More
Wealth is not all: how gentrification in Zurich has led to housing shortage
More
How a top Swiss university is screening Chinese students
More
Switzerland, the promised land of coats of arms
More
Swiss youth in vocational training seek jobs less prone to automation
More
Swiss pharmacies brace for shake-up as deregulation looms
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.