A Swiss court has sentenced four members of the UK's richest Hinduja family to jail for six months to four years for exploiting domestic workers at a luxury villa in Geneva. While Prakash Hinduja, the chairman of the Hinduja group in Europe, and his wife Kamal are sentenced to four years and six months in prison, their son Ajay and his wife Namrata Hinduja were sentenced to four years. The court also directed them to pay about US$950,000 in compensation and US$300,000 in procedural fees, according to reports.

According to a report from DW, these members of the family were accused of trafficking mostly illiterate domestic workers from India, confiscating their passports, and forcing them to work 16-hour days in their Geneva villa without overtime pay.

"The domestic workers were paid between 220 and 400 francs ($250-450) a month - a wage up to 90% less than what they could expect to earn in Switzerland. This wage was paid in Indian rupees into banks back home that the workers could not physically access," the report says.

The court, however, acquitted the family members charged with human trafficking of their servants, a report from Financial Times (FT) says.

"They spent more on [their] dog than one of their servants," Genevan public prosecutor Yves Bertossa told the court this week in a case that shed a harsh light on the punishing conditions to which one of the world's wealthiest families subjected their workers.

The domestic staff at the centre of the case, who were mostly illiterate, had been flown in directly from India to work at the family's palatial home in Switzerland, the report says.

In a damning verdict, presiding judge Sabina Mascotto said the Hindujas had no excuses for their behaviour. "(The workers) were exploited given their situation in India was so precarious, and they were exploited as they didn't know the language, had their passports confiscated and were only ever paid every three-six months."

"The four Hindujas knew the vulnerabilities of the staff and knew what the rules were in Switzerland, as they all were Swiss citizens and Ajay was educated in Switzerland," the judge added.

The court, nevertheless, ruled that the employees had known the terms they were signing up for when they entered the family's service in India and, therefore, could not have been said to be trafficked, according to the report from FT.

Prakash Hinduja is the second of three brothers from the Hinduja family. While Gopichand and Srichand settled in the UK, Prakash Hinduja settled in Switzerland after becoming a citizen of that country. Gopichand, worth an estimated 35bn (billion) pounds, is the wealthiest man in the UK. Srichand Hinduja died last May. Ashok Hinduja runs the Hinduja group's Indian operations.