Kiev: Alexander Vinnik, suspected of crypto fraud, may have
information about the activities of a group of officers of the Russian
Intelligence Agency, accused of interfering in the American elections by US
Attorney Robert Mueller.
The Greek
police detained Vinnik in 2017 after he faced the charges of
money laundering filed by the San Francisco prosecutor's office as one of the
leaders of the BTC-e crypto exchange. Since then, the US, France, and
Russia have been seeking his extradition. The Supreme Court of Greece is
expected to take a decision on this issue on September 19.
According
to US law enforcement officers, hackers from the Fancy Bear group, whose
members could be representatives of Russian intelligence, stole emails of the
democratic party representatives and falsified their votes in the 2016
election. Elliptic claims that all of these actions were carried out via
the BTC-e crypto exchange, which allowed anonymous operations.
“There was
a strong link between much of the funds allegedly used by the Fancy Bear group
and BTC-e… What I can’t say for certain is whether Fancy Bear obtained them
directly from BTC-e, or whether there was an intermediary," Tom Robinson,
chief data officer at Elliptic, stated.
Ilias Spyrliadis, the lawyer of the accused Russian, stated
that Vinnik didn’t know who was using the platform since he did not manage it
directly and was just an expert. He could see the user's personal documents but
could not verify their authenticity.