Russian citizen Vladimir Antonov, one of the former shareholders of Lithuania’s collapsed Snoras bank, has been detained in Baden, France, under a European arrest warrant issued by Lithuanian prosecutors, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Thursday.
Antonov was detained on December 9, and legal procedures to have him extradited to Lithuania are now underway.
“Procedures have begun for his extradition under the European arrest warrant,” Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė told reporters in the Seimas. She said she did not know when Antonov could be brought to Lithuania. She also said authorities have no information on the whereabouts of Raimondas Baranauskas, the bank’s former CEO.
In November last year, the Vilnius Regional Court sentenced Antonov and Baranauskas – both of whom remain in hiding in Russia – to 10.5 years in prison each in absentia for the large-scale embezzlement of bank assets.
The court issued its ruling after completing a criminal case transferred by prosecutors following more than seven years of pretrial investigation. The case is set to be reviewed by the Lithuanian Court of Appeal next year after defence lawyers challenged the verdict.
Antonov and Baranauskas were convicted of eight intentional crimes, with Antonov identified as the main organiser. The court ordered them to compensate €375.18 million in damages and confiscated €105 million in assets deemed to have been acquired through criminal means. Their property in Lithuania, the United Kingdom and France has been frozen until damages are repaid.
Snoras was nationalised and its operations suspended at the end of 2011.
Authorities have said Antonov and Baranauskas misappropriated €509.18 million, caused €466.67 million in losses to Snoras and its creditors, and squandered an additional €14.5 million.
UK courts ruled in 2015 that both men, then living in London, could be extradited to Lithuania, but they fled to Russia, where they received asylum. In 2018, Lithuanian prosecutors notified Russia of the charges as they prepared for an in-absentia trial, but Moscow refused to extradite them.
Court documents also show that Antonov’s family in Russia sought to have him declared dead.
In 2022, an international arbitration tribunal declined to hear a claim brought by a Russian fund seeking more than €1 billion on Antonov’s behalf for losses allegedly incurred from the nationalisation of Snoras shares.
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