VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Nine people, including a prominent executive who fled to France in an attempt to elude justice, were convicted Friday of criminal charges in a major Austrian bank fraud case linked to the 2005 collapse of New York-based commodities brokerage Refco Inc.

Vienna Federal Court Judge Claudia Bandion-Ortner found the defendants responsible for euro1.4 billion (US$1.9 billion) in losses at BAWAG, Austria's No. 4 bank.

The defendants include two former BAWAG executives, Helmut Elsner and Johann Zwettler, and U.S.-based investment banker Wolfgang Floettl.

All nine had proclaimed their innocence on charges of breach of trust, aiding breach of trust, false accounting and fraud.

Bandion-Ortner denounced Elsner's actions as "aggressive and recklessly risky."

She sentenced him to 9½ years in prison and ordered him to repay BAWAG euro6.8 million (US$10.76 million) in pension benefits. Zwettler was ordered to serve five years.

Floettl received a 2½-year sentence, but most of that time was suspended and he will serve only 10 months behind bars, Bandion-Ortner said.

The nine had faced up to 10 years in prison. All but Floettl immediately filed appeals; Floettl's lawyer said he would take a few days to decide whether to challenge his conviction.

BAWAG, or Bank Fuer Arbeit und Wirtschaft AG, loaned former Refco CEO Phillip Bennett several hundred million dollars (euros) just before the brokerage filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2005.

Bennett was sentenced to 16 years in prison Thursday in the U.S. by a judge who denounced what he called the "staggeringly arrogant" greed of the white-collar criminals implicated in the case.

Refco was one of the world's largest commodities brokerages, and prosecutors said BAWAG played a pivotal role in its collapse.

Friday's verdicts in Vienna came almost exactly a year after the trial began in an effort to bring to justice those responsible for BAWAG's staggering losses in soured currency speculation deals in the Caribbean. The losses first came to light in March 2006.

Floettl was found guilty despite an emotional plea by his wife, Anne Eisenhower, who had offered to pay euro5 million (US$3.15 million) in court costs if the judge would spare her husband prison time.

Austria's trade union federation owned BAWAG at the time it incurred the losses. In 2006, it sold the embattled bank to a consortium headed by U.S. private equity fund Cerberus Capital Management.

"We're happy that justice has been served," trade union federation chief Rudolf Hundstorfer said.

Elsner was the key defendant in the case, and had fled to France after BAWAG's troubles became publicly known.

Elsner, 73, who served as bank director from 1995-2003, was extradited back to Austria in February 2007. He has been hospitalized with heart ailments since his return, and was given oxygen early in the trial after collapsing during the proceedings.

Austrian media dubbed him a "Rockefeller-like figure" for his lavish lifestyle, passion for sports cars and penchant for smoking large, expensive cigars while walking his dog in a swanky Vienna neighborhood.

Most of the defendants sat motionless and showed little emotion as the sentences were read out, but Elsner kept turning around to look at the crowd packing the public gallery and smiled.

Some of the several hundred people who packed the courthouse Friday wore T-shirts that read "10 Year Maximum Sentence" - the penalty prosecutors had argued Elsner and the others deserved.

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