Businessman vermeidet ein Gefängnis nach SA ein Minderjähriger auf dem Flug in die Schweiz – Geldstrafe von 9.000 CHF und 5 Jahre lang verboten

This is our „justice“. But try to steal from a rich guy, they’ll throw away the key.

This is not just Switzerland. A similiar disturbing case on a Qatar flight: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/19/woman-sexually-assaulted-on-flight-challenges-uk-rules-on-compensation](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/19/woman-sexually-assaulted-on-flight-challenges-uk-rules-on-compensation)

And thank you for raising awareness… it is deeply unsettling to see that sexual assault while traveling is on the rise, and how unprepared the system is. And in general, how much the victim has to go through.

Why call the person a businessman? He’s just a pervert.

>Is it common for serious offenses to be resolved with financial penalties instead of custodial sentences?

How comes you know it’s a „serious offense“ if you don’t know how the Swiss legal system works? There are criteria how to judge something, after all, that’s what every legal system in the world does – or is at least supposed to do: come to a judgment based on legal standards. Judging the severity of something is part of the process. So, if you think you know that it was „serious“ it seems you have insider information we all don’t have.

I am, honestly, annoyed by the number of people who think they are entitled to have an opinion on such matters from afar, just because, well, they feel like it.

In Switzerland there are standards how to handle rape cases like this one. Your post is, for example, omitting the not-so-unimportant detail that the man was held in custody since March, so roughly 5 months of time by the publication of the article. It is common practice in Switzerland that for a prison sentence the custody time is subtracted. Given he was sentenced for 1.5 years jail (see your own article), if you deduct the 5 months, that’s roughly 13 months of jail time remaining. According to Swiss law, if the offender has no prior crime history, it is also common practice to actually not send people to prison for short sentences if there is no good reason to assume they will commit serious crimes outside again. Why the 1.5 years and not 2 or 10 or 20 or lifelong prison – we do not know, there are no details provided by the article on what exactly happened.

So, stop sensationalizing the story, that’s precisely what you are doing. If you want to imply that the Swiss law system is somehow intentionally or unintentionally supporting rape, then just state your case, but provide solid evidence for it, not a single article taken out of context with missing information.

Story has been discussed previously^. Here some threads:

* [https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1mwzuxr/swiss_corruption_examples/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1mwzuxr/swiss_corruption_examples/)
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/1mv8fru/ohne_worte/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/1mv8fru/ohne_worte/)
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1mw6wbr/is_it_only_in_switzerland_that_criminals_get/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askswitzerland/comments/1mw6wbr/is_it_only_in_switzerland_that_criminals_get/)

In general the legal system in Switzerland puts less emphasis on punishment and more emphasis on preventing future crimes.

as a broader debate… don‘t send your children on flights all by themselves… seriously how could you? things like that shouldn‘t happen of course but they do so if you ask me the parents and that pos businessman are at fault.

I’d hate to pay tax money for this sort of cunt. We can’t shoot them so best have them pay a fine and kick them out to whatever hole they came from. If he was a swiss citizen, I would certainly hope for jail-time, huge fine and restitution for life.

Ok I looked up the post @Toeffli linked in one of the comments and here’s why the sentence is so light (post is in german btw.):

He was offered a plea deal which all parties aka the offender, victim and judge agreed to it. Because of that the whole thing was a summary process rather then a normal (often longlasting) trial. That’s the reason why he got off lightly.
Here are some additional clarification (which I hopefully understood correctly), just in case some questions arise:

• Summary processes (Schnellverfahren) only happen if a plea deal is offered (with a full confession to everything)

• the victim has to be informed of the plea deal and the occuring consequences and has to agree/be ok with it otherwise the deal can’t happen in the first place

• a judge can either accept or deny the deal, but he can’t make changes to it

• the reasons those deals are often offered (and why a victim might agree woth it) is to prevent a „proper“ trial that could cause more stress on the victim and/or if there is a risk that the outcome would be that the offender get’s off even lighter or won’t be convicted at all

If I made an error here, I apologise. Also for potential wrong terms since english is my third language.

Here is the link Toeffli provided. You can find the informations in the comments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/1mv8fru/ohne_worte/

Edit: formating

He’s probably looking into Canadian visas now so he can continue his career as a long-distance flight rapist.