An Austrian courtroom dominated that Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who’s beneath home arrest in Vienna after being indicted on bribery fees within the United States greater than a decade in the past, can’t be extradited, ending a seven-year saga in opposition to the businessman.
A decrease courtroom had put Firtash’s extradition on maintain final yr, citing new proof. Prosecutors final yr appealed that call. On December 10, the Vienna Higher Regional Court dismissed that enchantment on technical grounds.
It was unclear if and when Firtash could be launched from home arrest. A spokesman didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The choice probably means the tip of the US Justice Department prosecution in opposition to him, as properly. Firtash was indicted a grand jury in 2013 on bribery fees associated to an Indian businessman and worthwhile metals for provide to Boeing.
The Justice Department had no rapid touch upon the courtroom ruling.
Corridors Of Influence
A tycoon who made his fortune partially primarily based on murky pure fuel offers involving Russia’s state fuel big Gazprom and Ukraine’s pipeline community, Firtash was on the top of his affect in Ukraine within the 2000s throughout the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko.
He later turned a serious funder of Yushchenko rival Viktor Yanukovych, who went on to develop into Ukraine’s president.
In State Department cables, US diplomats described Firtash as having hyperlinks to Russian organized crime, together with a infamous crime boss named Semyon Mogilevich. Firtash and his attorneys have denied these hyperlinks.
In March 2014, a couple of month after Yanukovych fled Ukraine following months of road protests, Firtash was arrested in Vienna, then launched to accommodate arrest after posting bail of $174 million.
In a July 2017 submitting submitted in US federal courtroom as a part of the bribery case, Justice Department prosecutors described Firtash as an “upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime.”
While beneath home arrest, Firtash was briefly drawn into political drama in Washington throughout the first time period of President Donald Trump. One of Trump’s attorneys, Rudy Guiliani, persuaded Firtash to rent two US attorneys with ties to the Trump Justice Department.
The attorneys later then obtained an announcement from a former Ukrainian prosecutor-general that attempted to implicate Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, in a scheme involving his son Hunter and the Ukrainian power firm Burisma Holdings. The prosecutor’s assertion mentioned it was written on the behest of Firtash’s attorneys.
Firtash faces embezzlement fees in Ukraine associated to the pure fuel commerce. Last yr, Britain barred him from coming into the nation, and introduced it was freezing his belongings there for “the bribing of public officers to acquire mining licenses, and…the misappropriation of property from the fuel transport community of Ukraine.”
