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French court sentences Russian national to five years for money laundering

The court also sentenced Alexander Vinnik to a total fine of over 100,000 euros, which includes compensations to the injured parties

Alexander Vinnik Yuri Malinov/TASS

Alexander Vinnik

© Yuri Malinov/TASS

PARIS, December 7. /TASS/. The Paris Criminal Court has sentenced Russian national Alexander Vinnik to five years for aggravated money laundering, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom on Monday.

"The court has found Alexander Vinnik guilty of aggravated money laundering and sentenced him to five years in prison," a judge said.

However, Vinnik was cleared of some money laundering charges and acquitted of charges of actions aimed at disrupting the operation of automated processing systems and using the Loki malware for cyber attacks.

The court also sentenced Vinnik to a total fine of over 100,000 euros, which includes compensations to the injured parties.

The prosecution insisted that Vinnik was the mastermind behind a criminal scheme to steal personal data and extort money. The Russian’s lawyers, in turn, said that he had been just an operator at the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange and had not benefited from the use of malicious software.

Vinnik case

Vinnik was detained in Greece in July 2017 at the request of the United States, where he is accused of laundering four to nine bln dollars through the now non-existent BTC-e cryptocurrency trading platform. In December 2019, the Greek justice minister made decisions to extradite him first to France and then to the United States and Russia. Vinnik denied charges brought by Washington and Paris, saying he was willing to be extradited to Russia.

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