Before beginning his testimony before the Board of Appeal of Thessaloniki, he bowed to the image of Christ behind the chair. “I am an Orthodox Christian, and I will speak in front of a religious icon,” said Fr. Alexander Vinik.

With these words, on September 29, 2017, the first act of the Cold War thriller began, which ended five years later with a release in the United States. A Russian citizen who claims to be an internet expert has become a bone of contention between the three countries and a central figure in a case unprecedented in Greek judicial history.

Vinick was flown from France last Thursday to Athens, where he boarded a private jet in complete secrecy and flew to the United States. After landing in Boston, he was allowed to call his mother in Russia and then flew to San Francisco, where a warrant was issued against him.

His lawyer Zoe Konstantinopoulou, in her statement, spoke of “abduction and enforced disappearance from Greek territory”, indicating that she was not allowed to contact him and that Vinick’s asylum application was pending.

The thread of the story begins on July 25, 2017 in Chalkidiki, where Vinik arrived with his wife and two sons. This was the fourth time they visited Greece on holiday. Twenty people, some in T-shirts and shorts, as his wife described, appeared on the beach and handcuffed the then 38-year-old Russian.

On January 17, 2017, an international arrest warrant for cybercrime was issued against him in the United States.

According to the US indictment, Vinick allegedly operated the BTC-e platform, one of the most popular digital currency exchanges.

However, the platform was also allegedly used by cyber-ransomware, corrupt federal agents, and hackers who stole personal data.

The Americans claim that the platform did not implement anti-money laundering mechanisms in violation of US federal law and that it laundered $4 billion in six years of its operation.

He was dubbed “Mr. Bitcoin” by the Greek media, and Vinick, from the very first moment and in every trial since then, claims that he is innocent and denies that he was the BTC-e manager. He was born in the city of Kurgan in the Urals, his father was a carpenter and his mother a cook.

As he himself stated, he showed an interest in technology from an early age. He disassembled and reassembled radios, taught himself a programming language, and began experimenting with the ZX Spectrum home computer at an early age.

His fear

Alexander Vinik calls his persecution “political” and emphasizes that the goal is to use “as a weapon in the information war between the US and Russia.”

In November 2017, at one of the meetings of the Supreme Court, convened to decide on his extradition to the United States, “K.” managed to talk to him.

He explained that he worked as a cryptocurrency expert for various companies. “I’m afraid I will never return from the US if I am extradited,” he said. “They want to appoint me a term of 55 years. In fact, this is life imprisonment. In the US, we are talking about real years, and not about how it is customary in Greece, where you can extend 8 years instead of 100.

Russia tried to file parallel extradition requests against him, first for goods fraud and then for cybercrime.

He declared himself innocent, but agreed to be sent to his homeland, as he believes that only there a fair trial awaits him. France has also joined the dance of claims, which issued a European warrant for his arrest in connection with the distribution of Locky ransomware, one of the most popular malware in digital hostage incidents.

In November 2018, when it was still unknown which country he would end up in, Vinik went on a hunger strike for several days and was hospitalized under guard at the Janeo hospital a few weeks later.

In the video released by his defenders, he looked haggard, with hungry cheeks. – Am I a prisoner of war? he said.

On December 19, 2019, by decision of Minister of Justice Kostas Tsiaras, a decision was made to extradite Vinik to France and it was determined that after the completion of the criminal process and sentencing, he should be returned to Greece to be extradited to the United States.

The third priority in this issue was Russia.

In addition to the Greek lawyers who have been protecting him all these years, Vinik had Russian lawyer Timofey Musatov from the very beginning, who prevented the extradition of Russian hacker Dmitry Zubaki to the United States after his arrest in Cyprus in 2012. In April 2020, Musatov was found dead in Moscow, reportedly after falling down a flight of stairs.

Tradition in France

In November of the same year, Vinik’s wife Oleksandra Shevchenko died at the age of 34 from brain cancer. In 2020, the wanted Russian was transferred from Greece to France, where criminal prosecution was dropped from him. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the offense and was due to be released from La Sade Judicial Prison on 06/30/2022, but his detention was extended until 4 August when he returned to Greece.

Ms Constantinopooulou claims that her client should not have been detained even for an hour. Referring to legal and humanitarian reasons, he applied to the Supreme Court with a request to repeat the process and asked to review the decision of the Minister of Justice on triple extradition to France, the USA, Russia, which provided for the retransmission of Vinik. to detention status. He spoke of a “judicial, diplomatic, intergovernmental and humanitarian scandal” that deprives the wanted man of his children, Plato and Leo, aged 8 and 11.

In his 2019 asylum application in Greece (his other application was denied in the first and second degree in 2018), Vinick calls his persecution “political” and the goal is to use “as a weapon in the information war between the US and the US” . and Russia”.