Former CEO of Crypto Exchange Wex Dmitry Vasiliev Reportedly Detained in Croatia – Dmitry Vasiliev, the former CEO of Wex, the former-Soviet space’s largest crypto trading platform, was detained at Franjo Tudjman Airport in the Croatian capital on Wednesday, May 25, according to Jutarnji List.
According to the daily, Zagreb authorities acted on a red warrant issued by Interpol in response to a request from Kazakhstan. Vasiliev, who currently resides in the Russian Federation, is wanted in Central Asia for scamming an investor of $20,000.
Kazakhstani authorities have been seeking Vasiliev’s extradition for some time, but the crime he is accused of is minor in comparison to other possible crimes. Wex went bankrupt in 2018, with a group of users estimating total losses of more than $400 million.
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The news of Vasiliev’s detention in Croatia comes after the Polish press reported in September last year that he had been arrested in mid-August at the Warsaw airport and was awaiting extradition to Kazakhstan. Following his release, he was said to have returned to Russia in December.
The crypto businessman was temporarily detained in Italy two years ago, but Italian authorities released him after a few weeks, citing faults in the extradition request. He was able to return to his home in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.
The arrest of a man charged with stealing financial assets from a cryptocurrency exchange was announced by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in March 2022. While neither the person nor the platform were named, a story said it was another Wex co-founder, Aleksey Bilyuchenko.
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Former CEO of Crypto Exchange Wex Dmitry Vasiliev Reportedly Detained in Croatia – Wex was founded in 2017 as the replacement of the controversial BTC-e exchange, which had shut down earlier that year when one of its alleged operators, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece.
The US accuses him of using the trading platform to launder up to $9 billion. Vinnik was extradited to France in December 2020, where he was sentenced to five years in prison, and he is also wanted by Russia.
