Local media reports that Dmitry Vasiliev was arrested on his entry to Croatia as a co-owner and the former chief executive at Wex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange. Kazakhstan is seeking the crypto-entrepreneur, who is being accused of taking money from an investor.
Wex Executive Vasiliev apprehended at Zagreb Airport
Dmitry Vasiliev from Belarus, former CEO and founder of Wex (once the biggest crypto trading platform in former Soviet space), was taken into custody at Franjo Tudjman Airport in Croatia on Wednesday May 25, according to Jutarnji List.
According to daily, authorities in Zagreb acted upon a red warrant that Interpol issued on request from Kazakhstan. Vasiliev, who is a Russian citizen, has been arrested in Kazakhstan for fraud of $20,000.
Kazakhstan’s law enforcement has been seeking Vasiliev’s extradition for some time, but the crime he is accused of there is relatively minor compared to other suspected offenses. In 2018, Wex declared bankruptcy and, according to estimates from a number of users. The total loss is more than $400 million.
The news of Vasiliev’s detention in Croatia comes after in September last year, the Polish press revealed he had been arrested at the Warsaw airport in mid-August and was awaiting extradition to Kazakhstan. He was released in September and it was later reported that he has returned to Russia.
He was arrested in Italy two years back. But, after many weeks of deliberations, Italian authorities allowed him to go citing his failures with the extradition request. He was able to return to St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, where he lives.
A man was accused of taking financial assets from cryptocurrency exchanges. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs made this announcement in March 2022. Although neither the individual nor the platform could be identified, reports suggested that this was Aleksey Blyuchenko (another Wex founder).
Wex, the successor to the notorious BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange was founded in 2017. It had been shut down earlier that year following the arrest of Alexander Vinnik (one of its operators) in Greece. According to the U.S., he is suspected of laundering over $9 billion using the trading platform. Vinnik was expelled to France where he was given a five-year sentence in December 2020. He is now wanted by Russia.
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