A Russian being held in Greece on money laundering and fraud charges is dangerously malnourished after three months on hunger strike in protest at his incarceration, his lawyers said Thursday. Alexander Vinnik, who headed the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e and faces three different extradition warrants, has lost a third of his weight, they said.
"His life is hanging by a thread," his legal team said, arguing that under Greek legal rules, the 39-year-old should have been released on January 26 after reaching a maximum 18-month pre-trial detention limit. Vinnik has been held in custody since his arrest in July 2017 in the northern Greek tourist resort of Halkidiki.
Vinnik wants to be extradited to Russia, where he is wanted on fraud charges totalling 9,500 euros ($10,800). His wife and two children live there. But the US and France also want to put him on trial. His lawyers claim his life would be in danger there.
"He is a pawn in the Cold War between the US and Russia," one of them, Zoe Constantopoulou, said. Separate Greek court decisions have approved the extradition requests of all three countries. The final decision is up to the Greek justice minister.
A US court has indicted Vinnik 21 charges ranging from identity theft and facilitating drug trafficking to money laundering. The French warrant says Vinnik defrauded more than 100 people in six French cities between 2016 and 2018. Separate Greek court rulings have BTC-e, founded in 2011, became one of the world's largest and most widely used digital currency exchanges.
A judicial source said BTC-e was also suspected of having played a role in online extortion and other cyber-crimes. Vinnik is also being investigated in connection with the hacking of an earlier earlier digital currency exchange Mt. Gox, one of the pioneers in the field before collapsing in 2014.
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