French court to decide on Antonov's extradition to Lithuania this week - BNS EXCLUSIVE

VILNIUS - A court in the northwestern French city of Rennes will on Thursday, January 29, hear the extradition case of Vladimir Antonov, a Russian citizen and one of the former convicted shareholders of Lithuania's commercial bank Snoras, which collapsed in 2011.

Ronan Le Clerc, a representative of the Rennes Court of Appeal, told BNS that the prosecution service will request that Antonov be handed over to Lithuanian law enforcement authorities on the basis of a European arrest warrant. The court's ruling is expected to be announced the following day.

According to the French official, Antonov, who is currently in custody, opposes his extradition to Lithuania.

"As the merits of this case have not yet been examined, no information can be provided at this stage of the proceedings," Le Clerc explained.

Antonov was was arrested in Baden, France, on December 9 under a European arrest warrant issued by Lithuania's Prosecutor General's Office.

Rita Stundiene, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office, told BNS earlier in January that it was still unclear when Antonov would be extradited to Lithuania.

In November 2024, Vilnius Regional Court sentenced Antonov and Lithuanian national Raimondas Baranauskas, the other former shareholder of Snoras, who were hiding in Russia, to 10.5 years in prison for embezzling large amounts of the bank's assets.

The verdict came after the court started hearing the Snoras case in 2019 after a pre-trial investigation that lasted more than seven years.

Antonov and Baranauskas were convicted of eight intentional crimes. Antonov was also recognized as the mastermind the crimes. Both defendants were also ordered to pay 375.18 million euros in damages.

The court also ordered the confiscation of 105 million euros from both defendants as criminally obtained property, and European arrest warrants were issued for them.

In addition, the court ordered the seizure of their assets in Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and France, which will remain in effect until the damages awarded are paid.

Snoras was nationalized and its operations were suspended in late 2011.

Antonov and Baranauskas are estimated to have embezzled 509.18 million euros, caused 466.67 million euros in damages to Snoras and its creditors and squandered another 14.5 million euros.

In 2015, British courts decided to extradite Antonov and Baranauskas, who were living in London at the time, to Lithuania, but they fled the UK to Russia and were granted asylum there.

In March 2018, as they were preparing to try the two businessmen in absentia, Lithuanian prosecutors informed the Russian Prosecutor General's Office of the charges against them, but Russia refused to extradite them.

BNS reported earlier that, according to court data, Antonov's family in Russia had requested that he be declared dead.

In 2022, BNS wrote that the International Court of Arbitration refused to hear a case brought by a fund defending the rights of Russian investors in foreign countries against Lithuania as the fund was seeking more than 1 billion euros in damages for Antonov for the nationalized shares of the collapsed Snoras bank.