Supreme Court throws out crypto businessmen extradition appeal
The Estonian Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of two businessmen suspected of crypto currency fraud on a scale which may exceed half a billion euros, and who face extradition to the United States, daily Postimees reports.
The ruling means a decision is now in force to allow the pair to be extradited to stand trial in the U.S.
Crypto businessmen Ivan Turogin and Sergei Potapenko had contested the extradition order from the Estonian government, claiming via their lawyers that the extradition norms ran counter to the Constitution because the division of competencies was unclear, while deadlines were too short for them to be able to defend themselves effectively against that order.
The first-tier administrative court agreed with the government order, ruling that according to the government's evidence, the Federal Bureau of Prisons' statutes governing the operation of prisons provide for conditions of detention that broadly meet the humane treatment requirement both under U.S. law and international human rights norms, while the second-tier circuit court upheld this ruling.
The company run by Turovin and Potapenko had hundreds of thousands of customers around the world, and potential damages amount to more than half a billion euros.
The original Postimees English piece is here.
Estonian authorities together with the FBI arrested the two men as suspects in November 2022.
Speaking at the time, Oskar Gross, head of the Cybercrime Bureau of the National Criminal Police, said: "The sheer volume of this investigation is outlined by the fact that this is one of the largest fraud cases we've ever had in Estonia."
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