Ex-head of a notorious crypto exchange detained at the request of Kazakhstan

The former owner of the cryptocurrency exchange WEX, Dmitry Vasiliev, who was wanted by Interpol, was detained at the Croatian capital’s airport.

According to local media, the detention took place on May 25 on the basis of an Interpol red card issued by Kazakhstan. A few years ago, a criminal case of fraud was opened against Vasiliev there. The former head of the crypto exchange is suspected of embezzling more than $ 20,000 and is being extradited.

Dmitri Vasiliev is a native of Belarus. He became interested in cryptocurrencies in the 2010s, serving large clients from China who traded on the largest Russian-language crypto exchange BTC-e.

In the summer of 2017, BTC-e closed down and was relaunched in the fall under the new name Wex, where Vasiliev became its director. As of the end of 2017, Wex was one of the twenty largest crypto exchanges in the world, with a daily trading turnover of $ 80 million.

In July 2018, the Wex crypto exchange stopped working due to «technical work». At the same time, an agreement was signed on the transfer of ownership of WEX to the ex-militant of the so-called «DNR» Dmitry «Sailor» Khavchenko.

In August of that year, the exchange declared bankruptcy. According to estimates, the losses exceeded $ 400 million, about half of which was attributed to Vasilyev personally. In addition, the law enforcement agencies of Kazakhstan received a complaint against the former head of the crypto exchange. A client of the exchange from Almaty accused Vasiliev of stealing $ 20,000 from him using Wex.

In the spring of 2019, Kazakhstan recognized him as a fraud suspect in absentia and put him on the international wanted list.

For the first time, at the request of Kazakhstan, Vasilyev was arrested in 2019 in Italy, but then he managed to return to Russia.

For the second time, the former Wex owner was detained in August 2021 at Warsaw airport, after which the court arrested him for 40 days. The Polish prosecutor’s office considered extraditing Vasiliev to Kazakhstan, but even then he was released. At that time, Vasilyev’s lawyer clarified that the court had not yet made a final decision on his transfer to Kazakh law enforcement.

So the former head of the crypto exchange returned to Russia again. Soon after, an unknown person withdrew 100 ETH from one of the WEX wallets via Binance.