From prison to prison
His family told RIA Novosti that Alexander Vinnik was taken to the USA. He was first brought to Boston where he was allowed to call home. And then they were transferred to San Francisco, because the court of this city initially issued an order for the arrest of the Russians.
“It all happened and was framed as a kidnapping,” the businessman’s family said.
According to open sources, on July 25, 2017, Vinnik was arrested on the Greek peninsula of Chaldiki at the request of the United States. He rested there with his family. In the United States, the Russian is accused of money laundering and cryptocurrency fraud.
According to the US Department of Justice, in 2011 Vinnik founded the BTC-e online exchange, which exchanged bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for dollars, rubles and euros. According to US law enforcement, the Russians bought a similar exchange, the Japanese Mt. Gox – as a result, several hundred thousand bitcoins were stolen (at the exchange rate of the summer of 2017, this amount was almost equal to 2 billion dollars). He legalized these funds using BTC-e.
It is also accused of stealing personal data of online exchange users. Criminal groups, including drug dealers, are allegedly laundering money through VTS-e. According to American estimates, the turnover of the exchange ranged from 4 to 9 billion dollars.
During his career, Vinnik was in demand in many countries: in addition to the United States, Russia and France demanded his extradition. And in 2020, New Zealand police announced they had seized $90 million from WME Capital Management, a company registered to Vinnik.
Four refund requests
The United States was the first country to request the extradition of Vinnik. The Thessaloniki Court accepted this request on 4 October 2017. The businessman’s lawyers appealed, but the Greek Supreme Civil and Criminal Court upheld the decision.
However, shortly after the United States, in September 2017, the Thessaloniki court received a request from the Prosecutor General of Russia demanding the extradition of Vinnik, because in his homeland he “stolen more than 600 thousand rubles under the pretext of anonymity” supply of equipment from an enterprise”. The Greeks did not refuse the Russians and approved the extradition of the businessman to the Russian Federation – only a week after promising the Americans.
Already on July 30, the court in Thessaloniki again gave a positive decision on the second case of the Prosecutor General of Russia, which accused Vinnik of a new crime – “fraud in the amount of 750 million rubles in the field of computer information. “
However, just 17 days ago, Greece had promised to extradite Vinnik to France to carry out “investigation activities” on a European order. According to the rules, he was to be extradited to Greece after interrogation. The French accused the Russians of “blackmail and money laundering as part of a criminal group” in 2016-2018.
Thus, the Greeks promised Vinnik’s extradition after four requests for extradition at once. France won – the accused was sent there in 2020. But the French were in no hurry to extradite the Russians to Greece, but sentenced him to five years in prison.
return to greece
Vinnik has repeatedly denied the charges against him in the United States and France. He always said that he only agreed to be repatriated to his homeland. At the end of November 2018, he declared himself a political prisoner and went on a hunger strike. In prison, the Russian Federation Ombudsman for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova soon visited him, after which she ended her hunger strike.
According to the Greek constitution, a person can be held free of charge for up to 18 months. For Vinnik, this period expired on January 26, 2019. In exceptional cases, the Code of Criminal Procedure allows for an extension of detention up to 30 months. However, the Greek court did not take such a decision. Therefore, Vinnik’s lawyers hastened to make a request to the appropriate authorities for the release of the Russians from custody.
But on April 11, 2019, the Greek court refused to release the entrepreneur. In response, she continued her hunger strike. In July of the same year, they decided to keep him in prison until January 25, 2020. And after the Russians surrendered to the French.
It became known that on July 2, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights forbade France to extradite Vinnik to Greece, and from there he could be transferred to the United States. Despite this, he was nevertheless sent to the Greeks, while he was in a French prison.
In anticipation of this, the United States withdrew one of the permits to extradite a Russian sent to France. Only those sent to the Greeks remained in force. In response, Greece sent a request to France for the extradition of Vinnik in another case. According to Vinnik’s French lawyer, Frederic Belo, with the help of such a “deceptive maneuver”, the United States ensured that Vinnik was not only imprisoned, but also extradited to and from there to Greece. states as soon as possible.
On the eve it became known that a plane with a Russian on board flew from France to Athens.