Former head of city finance convicted of embezzlement must serve full sentence

The Swiss Federal Court, the highest court in the land, has ruled that the former head of finance in the city, Ivo Romer, must serve his full sentence of 55 months; this after he had appealed to the court to have it reduced.

Regular readers will remember that Romer, a former head of finance in the city, was charged and subsequently convicted of several counts of embezzling funds amounting CHF1,994,000 from an elderly widow who had entrusted him with looking after her assets between the years 2006 and 2012. When she subsequently died at the age of 96, her heirs were shocked to discover she had only around CHF 16,000 in her account. Romer was also found guilty of embezzling a further CHF 1.4 million from a foundation set up by the widow.

In a detailed investigation into the case, it was discovered the money embezzled by Romer, a city councillor of the FDP party, had found its way to his accounts and those of his companies.

What should be made clear is that Romer embezzled his client’s funds in a private capacity as her asset manager. In no way were the city’s funds involved.

In addition to his being convicted of these offences at the Zug criminal court in 2017, he was subsequently found guilty of money-laundering by the supreme court of Zug the following year, which resulted in the extension of his sentence by one month and a conditional fine.

The now 54-year-old will now actually have to serve a further 40 months, the time he has already spent in jail since 2017 having been taken into consideration.

He is now expected to pay back the money he embezzled from the widow to her heirs and reimburse the foundation, too.

At this appeal hearing in Lausanne, Romer wanted to put right accusations levied at him during the second trial at the Zug supreme court that he had taken money from the elderly widow’s account, sometimes from ATMs in Zurich, secretly and against her will. He also felt that this latter court had not taken into consideration his insistence that his client had told him he could spend the money as he thought fit. However, the Swiss Federal Court rejected these claims.

Furthermore, the court dismissed a claim by the former councillor that he was not guilty on all counts of falsifying documents in relation to the embezzlement.