Serbia does not want to detain the founders of the Nexo crypto company that are wanted in Bulgaria, Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev wrote in a complaint to several European and EU institutions, adding that this is an ‘unprecedented case’.
Prosecutors said they had written to the Council of Europe, the European Committee on Crime Problems, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
The complaint reads that Serbia has not fulfilled its obligation under the European Convention on Extradition and has not notified Sofia of the result of the sent requests regarding Nexo founders Antoni Trenchev and Kosta Kanchev.
Trenchev, Kanchev, Trayan Nikolov and Kalin Metodiev were accused of participating in an organised criminal group after the prosecutor launched an investigation in January and searched Nexo’s offices.
The accused claim that the charges are political, with prosecution-friendly media reporting that the investigation is linked to the opposition parties, Change continues and Democratic Bulgaria.
According to the indictment, the group operated from the start of 2018 until 12 January 2023, when the investigators began their work.
The group allegedly operated on the territory of Bulgaria, Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Cayman Islands and was created to commit various crimes, including money laundering, tax fraud, computer crimes and carrying out banking activities without a licence.
“The case is unprecedented. So far, there has not been such a case of non-implementation of an international treaty in the field of criminal law,” Geshev wrote, requesting that the problems related to the application of the convention be urgently resolved.
Under the convention, countries must ensure effective and prompt action in extradition procedures, but this does not mean automatically returning or detaining people in the countries where they are wanted. The assessment is for each specific case, taking into account the opinion of the wanted persons.
Ex-prosecutor and now an NGO expert, Andrey Yankulov, explained that Interpol previously removed the wife and daughter of banker Tsvetan Vasilev from the wanted list because the criminal prosecution against them was for political reasons.
At the start of the week, the prosecutor’s office announced that on 7 April, it had received information from Interpol’s office in Belgrade that the two defendants had arrived on 6 April in Belgrade on a flight from Dubai.
According to the chief prosecutor, with their actions, the Serbian authorities allow the wanted persons to avoid criminal responsibility in Bulgaria.
They both flew back to Dubai. For nearly eight years, Serbia has refused to return the defendant who drained the CC Bank, Tsvetan Vassilev, to Bulgaria.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
