On June 16, the Austrian court ruled in favor of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash in the case of his extradition to the USA.
The Associated Press (AP) writes about it.
In the US, Firtash is accused of corruption, namely of conspiracy to pay bribes in India for titanium mining. The oligarch denies his guilt.
Firtash was arrested in Austria in 2014 and later released on €125 million bail. The Vienna court initially refused extradition, considering the case to be politically motivated. In February 2017, a higher court rejected this argument as "insufficiently substantiated" and ruled that Firtash could be extradited. In 2019, the Austrian Supreme Court confirmed this decision.
The countryʼs justice minister at the time approved the extradition, but a Vienna court judge ruled that it could only happen after the case was reopened.
In March 2022, the Vienna Court refused to reopen the case. But the high court has now ruled in favor of Firtash and overturned the 2017 decision. Now judges in Vienna will have to reconsider sending Firtash to the United States.
In June 2019, a federal judge in Chicago denied a motion to dismiss the indictment against Firtash, who argued that the US lacked jurisdiction over crimes in India.
- In Ukraine, Dmytro Firtash received suspicion from the Security Service of Ukraine and the Bureau of Economic Security. According to the investigation, over seven years, one of the criminal schemes of "Oblgas Firtash" caused losses to the Ukrainian budget of 18 billion hryvnias.