Dmitry Vasiliev, former chief executive of Russian cryptocurrency exchange Wex, has been detained in Warsaw, the Polish press reported. Vasiliev is wished in Kazakhstan the place he’s accused of fraud associated to the now defunct buying and selling platform, successor of the notorious BTC-e change.
Former Wex Executive in Polish Custody as Prosecutor’s Office Reviews Extradition Request
Ex-owner and CEO of Wex Dmitry Vasiliev was detained at the Warsaw airport on Aug. 11, the leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed this week. In response to sources quoted by the publication, the 34-year-old native of Belarus has been positioned beneath arrest for 40 days.
Poland’s National Public Prosecutor’s Office is now considering his extradition to Kazakhstan. Authorities within the Central Asian nation have been searching for Vasiliev via Interpol for a number of years as a part of ongoing investigation on fraud prices.
In its report on the case, the BBC Russian Service said Polish police had declined to comment on the information about the case. Nonetheless, rumors of Vasiliev’s detention have been circulating amongst Wex’s purchasers since August and an in depth acquaintance of his has confirmed to the BBC that he was certainly in Polish custody.
This isn’t Dmitry Vasiliev’s first arrest in Europe. Two years ago, he was detained in Italy but managed to eventually return to the Russian Federation where he resided permanently in the city of Saint Petersburg. Italian authorities launched him after a number of weeks in detention, citing faults in his extradition request.
Dmitry Vasiliev’s BTC-e Connection
Wex, once the largest crypto trading platform in the Russian-speaking world, was launched in the fall of 2017 as a successor of BTC-e. The notorious change closed down earlier that 12 months following the arrest of considered one of its alleged operators, Alexander Vinnik, in Greece. Vinnik is accused by the U.S. of laundering as much as $9 billion via BTC-e. He was sentenced to five years in prison by a French court in December.
In response to the Russian enterprise information portal RBC, Wex had reached a day by day turnover of $80 million earlier than it went offline. In 2018, its operator, the Singapore-based entity World Exchange Services, was sold to Dmitry Havchenko, an entrepreneur from Kyiv turned separatist fighter in Eastern Ukraine. Whereas Dmitry Vasiliev was the corporate’s official proprietor, BBC claims Wex really belonged to Aleksey Bilyuchenko, Vinnik’s accomplice at BTC-e.
After being in and out of service for months, during which it also changed its web address several times, Wex halted withdrawals in the summer of 2018 and later went bankrupt. In response to estimates by a bunch of Wex customers quoted by Forklog, whole losses exceed $400 million with Vasiliev himself suspected of withdrawing $200 million. He is wanted in Kazakhstan after a trader from Almaty turned to local law enforcement accusing the Belarusian of stealing $20,000 worth of funds through Wex.
In response to the report, 100 ETH have been just lately withdrawn from a pockets belonging to Wex that has a remaining stability of over 9,900 ETH. The digital currency was transferred to Binance, the first such transaction in the past three years. In 2018, the world’s main crypto change blocked an account that had acquired 93,000 ETH from wallets related to Wex.
