The Italian court rejected Russia’s claims regarding the extradition of Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko recently.

‘In the course of a preliminary hearing, the court ruled that Alexei Kalinichenko’s extradition must be rejected to the Russian party. None of our officers were present at the hearing, so we cannot say what exactly was the ground behind this decision,’ the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs informed UrBC.

The extradition request was placed with the Italian authorities by the Russian Federation General Prosecutor’s Office international legal cooperation department on July 3, 2008. By then, Kalinichenko had already been detained by the Italian Interpol during a special operation on June 4, 2008. In Russia, the former bank executive was accused of large-scale fraud, with charges based on Article 159 (part 4) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code. The Prosecutor’s Office insisted on his being arrested.

‘It’s true that an extradition related to alleged economic offenses is a very complicated process, with the final decision taken by the court of the country where the suspect is currently located. We are planning on providing the Italian party with some more convincing evidence of Alexei Kalinichenko’s criminal activity. We actually got in touch with the people who became this fraudster’s victims, so a lot of them identified the man as their offender. This resulted in detecting even more instances of Kalinichenko’s perpetrations, so the Russian authorities are now busy gathering all the incriminating evidence and carrying on with the investigation. So, more criminal lawsuits are being instituted following the victims’ applications. We do hope the Italian court will change their mind, as the evidence of Kalinichenko being guilty looks quite convincing to us,’ the spokesperson said.