The United States withdrew a request for the extradition of Russian Alexander Vinnik from France. This information was shared by lawyer Frederic Belo, reports RBC.
The request was submitted in 2020. The cancellation of the extradition became known now, during the hearings in the Investigative Chamber of the Court of Paris,
“With such a deceptive maneuver, the United States sought to ensure that Vinnik not only remained in prison, but was also returned to Greece, so that from there he would be sent to the United States as quickly as possible,” Belo is sure.
The court postponed further hearings of Vinnik’s case from September 7 to August 3. Until then, he will remain in a French prison.
US Department of Justice refused from comments.
We will remind, Vinnik was detained in Greece in 2017 on suspicion of laundering $4 billion through the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange. At the same time, the US authorities confiscated BTC-e domain.
Over time, the Greek court granted the request for the extradition of Vinnik at the request of three countries at once – USA, Russia and France. In December 2019, Greek Minister of Justice Kostas Tsiaras adopted successive extradition decision Russians first to France, and then to the USA and the Russian Federation.
In 2020 Vinnik extradited from Greece to France. There he was sentenced to five years prison and a fine of 100,000 euros. The defense tried to appeal the decision, but the court left sentence plans are accepted.
