Greece’s decision to extradite Alexander Vinnik, the alleged former operator of now-defunct crypto exchange BTC-e, to France has upset Russia.

Mr Vinnik, the alleged mastermind of a $4 billion laundering scheme, was first arrested in Greece in July 2017.

Since then, Russia has tried to bring Vinnik back to the country of his citizenship by filing a number of requests with Greek judicial authorities and seeking help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Greek Justice Minister Konstantinos Tsiaras delivered the decision, and the Russian Embassy first reported news of Mr Vinnik’s extradition on Twitter and expressed regret that Greece had ‘ignored’ its requests to return Mr Vinnik to them. In 2017, Mr Vinnik had publicly declared his innocence and had offered to help Russian President Vladimir Putin as a digital technology specialist. In 2018, a plot to murder Mr Vinnik in prison was uncovered and in September 2018, Bloomberg News reported on a potential link between Mr Vinnik and Russian hacking group and intelligence service Fancy Bear. He appealed for his release from Greece or extradition to Russia in March 2019.

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The United States had also been seeking for Mr Vinnik’s extradition with US prosecutors filing a complaint against Mr Vinnik in July 2019 for his failure to register BTC-e with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and for other practices. An Elliptic blockchain analysis of a bitcoin transaction linked Vinnik’s former employer, BTC-e to the group and this strengthened the American interest of extradiction.

Mr Vinnik has maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing.