9. October 2024
© APA/Harald Schneider
At the Salzburg regional court on Wednesday, a former bank employee was sentenced to 24 months in prison, eight of them unconditional, for breach of trust and embezzlement. According to the indictment, the 49-year-old customer advisor is said to have caused damage to his employer – a Raiffeisen bank – by over 1.3 million euros over four years. The long-time employee confessed in the trial and blamed his gambling addiction for the crime. The judgment is not final.
The man is said to have systematically diverted customer money from August 2019 to January 2024. To do this, he accessed securities portfolios, savings accounts and savings books of the customers he looked after and thus illegally obtained a total of 1.32 million euros.
For example, he sold securities without knowing the owners and pocketed the profits himself. In order to conceal his actions, he simply did not send the relevant deposit statements. A total of 14 bank accounts were affected.
Employed at the financial institution for more than 30 years
Most recently, in three cases, the defendant did not forward registration fees for liens collected from customers to the district courts as intended. “He was an employee of the bank for over 30 years and abused the strong relationship of trust that customers had placed in him,” emphasized the public prosecutor.
“The matter would have been uncovered shortly with the court fees at the latest,” said his defense attorney Kurt Jelinek. Incidentally, all affected customers were held harmless by the Raiffeisenverband Salzburg, and the victims were also reimbursed for any interest or price losses on the securities that were lost due to the malversations.
The crimes were discovered after two bank employees sought to speak to the defendant about his own overdrawn account. “Then he suddenly broke down, became extremely emotional and confessed that he had a serious gambling problem and had used customer money unlawfully,” said a witness in the trial.
The man was released on the same day, but the previously blameless 49-year-old subsequently made a significant contribution to the investigation, bank representatives confirmed. The defendant reported how he started gambling ten years ago, but for a long time believed that he could control his addiction.
Leading a double life since 2016
From 2016 onwards he led a double life and took out loans. At one point he was about to contact addiction counseling. “But unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that anymore.”
He was denied further loans from 2019 onwards, when he used customer money for the first time. “In the end there was just more loss of control, just more pressure from the game. I was hoping that they would figure it out for me, I couldn’t do it on my own,” said the defendant.
The father of the family has debts of around 575,000 euros
Except for a smaller amount, the defendant accepts the full amount of damages. It is unclear whether he will ever be able to repay the amount. The father of two underage children still has outstanding debts of around 575,000 euros even without compensation for damages.
Although he recently filed two lawsuits against gaming companies with a value of around 700,000 euros and another around 800,000 euros, the chances of success seem slim. In one case, the lawsuit could not even be served – the betting provider is based on the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
The sentence for the 49-year-old would have been one to ten years. Due to the current sentence, he would be eligible for an ankle bracelet for the unconditional part of his prison sentence. The man was also sentenced to probation and gambling addiction therapy.
After the crimes were discovered, the former bank employee was in the hospital and in therapy for 3.5 months. Today he still regularly goes to the psychosocial service and is trying to get his everyday family life under control. “But it continues to be ups and downs. There are days when I feel better and days when I don’t.”