Greece agrees to extradite to US Russian citizen suspected of money laundering
The court in Greece has approved the request for extradition to the US of Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik. Vinnik was detained on suspicion of laundering $4 billion through bitcoins, as reported by Interfax with reference to Vinnik’s lawyer, Ilias Spirliadis.
"The court decided to grant the US request for Vinnick's extradition but we will appeal to the Supreme Court of Athens, so the decision made today is not final," Spirliadis said.
Greek authorities detained Vinnik jointly with US authorities on June 26. He is suspected of having laundered at least $4 billion through bitcoin transactions in 2011. Vinnik has not admitted to any wrongdoing.
The US Justice Department filed charges against Vinnik and said that he laundered money with the help of the largest bitcoin exchange BTC-e. Representatives of the exchange said that Vinnik had never cooperated with them. On July 25, FBI agents came to the BTC-e data center and seized all their equipment.
A criminal case has also been initiated against Vinnik in Russia. Russian law enforcement agencies arrested him in absentia and charged him under part 3 of section 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: a large scale fraud committed by a person using his official position.