Oleksandr Vinnik has been imprisoned for about five years. He was arrested on July 25, 2017 on the Halkidiki peninsula in Greece at the request of the United States. Vinnik is accused of violating US law and creating, without a license from the authorities, the BTC-E cryptocurrency exchange, through which, according to the US, billions of dollars were laundered. In the United States, a Russian citizen faces 55 years in prison.
In January 2020, Alexander Vinnik was extradited to France on 19 charges, but the court acquitted him of all charges brought by the French side and convicted the Russian on one US charge for five years. At the same time, the court in France considered that Vinnik did not commit a criminal offense, but a misdemeanor. The term of his imprisonment has ended, but the citizen of the Russian Federation remains in prison. He should have already been extradited to Greece for extradition to the United States. But the ECHR banned the extradition of Alexander Vinnik to Greece.
On August 4, Vinnik, convicted in Paris, was sent from France to Greece. Earlier it became known that the United States would extradite the Russian from there. He was supposed to be sent to San Francisco, because the city’s court had originally issued an arrest warrant for Vinnik, accused of extortion and money laundering.
