Greece has extradited a Russian man convicted of money laundering to the US, hours after his release from a French jail, his lawyer said Friday.
Zoe Konstantopoulou said Alexander Vinnik “was loaded to a private plane to the US” without being allowed to lodge an asylum request in Greece.
A source with knowledge of the case in France said Vinnik had been handed back to Greek authorities on Thursday afternoon, just weeks after the Court of Cassation in Paris had confirmed his five-year sentence for money laundering.
Vinnik, 43, had been in French custody for the past two years following his extradition from Greece.
The father of two has been the subject of a long legal wrangle between Greece, France, Russia and the United States.
He was originally arrested in July 2017 at the northern Greek tourist resort of Halkidiki. A long judicial procedure followed, with Greece sifting through the conflicting extradition requests before deciding in favour of France.
A French court in 2020 sentenced Vinnik to five years in prison for money laundering, but cleared him of an original charge of defrauding nearly 200 people using ransomware. His sentence was confirmed by the French Court of Cassation in June.
A US indictment accuses Vinnik of 21 charges ranging from identity theft and facilitating drug trafficking to money laundering.
In Russia he is wanted on lesser fraud charges involving just 9,500 euros.
