France refuses to deport one of the largest cryptocurrency fraudsters to the United States

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has banned the French authorities from extraditing Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik to Greece. The Greek authorities are going to deport the Russian to the United States, where he faces up to 55 years in prison in a case of cryptocurrency fraud.

on July 6, a court in Paris will reconsider Vinnik’s appeal against the decision to extradite him to the United States. His defense insists that this decision is based on «purely political motives.»

Oleksandr Vynnyk was arrested in July 2017 in Greece at the request of the United States. The U.S. authorities accuse him of laundering between $ 4 billion and $ 9 billion through the defunct BTC-e crypto exchange.

In 2019, Greece decided to extradite the Russian successively, first to France, then to the United States and Russia.

in 2020, a court in France sentenced him to 5 years in prison. Taking into account the time he had already spent behind bars, he was supposed to be released on June 30, 2022. However, this did not happen, as he was immediately served with an arrest warrant in the United States.

The US authorities suspect that Vynnyk was collaborating with Russian intelligence. According to their version, the funds that passed through BTC-e could have financed Russian security forces.

The BTC-e exchange operated from 2011 to 2017. Its operations were suspended after Vynnyk’s arrest. Soon after, the crypto exchange was relaunched under the name Wex. It was taken over by a Singaporean company owned by Dmitry Vasiliev. on May 30, 2022, he was arrested in Croatia on suspicion of fraud committed in 2018.