wrong char printed when reading output from commandline

hello,
I have a commandline windows sw that outputs a string, the output I can see from the commandline is for example

<email address hidden>

In the sikulix script I'm using

subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT
process = Popen([dirPath+"\\\CmdLineSw.exe","-d", strPass], stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
stdout, stderr = process.communicate()

to launch the commandline and retrieve the output as a string without the windows cmd be visible
When reading the same from within sikulix I have some strange char in the printout:
Username@=username�mailserver�com

this is the line I use to print (I've put the "@" in the constant part of the printout to check if it was printable):

print "Username@=" + strPass

What am I missing?
Thanks in advance