VIENNA – An Austrian court confirmed on Tuesday its refusal to proceed with a Spanish extradition request for a Ukrainian national who is under suspicion of running an alleged criminal organization and of money laundering, a Vienna court source told EFE on Tuesday.
A Vienna court confirmed to EFE that Ukrainian oligarch Dimitri Firtash will not be extradited to Spain.
The judicial decision cannot be appealed and confirms a prior resolution by a Vienna regional court, which argued that the Barcelona judge who issued Firtash’s European arrest warrant did not provide enough information for it to process its request relating to the Ukrainian oligarch.
“This is the reason,” Reinhard Hinger, the court’s spokesman, told EFE. He added that the court “did not consider that anything specific has been revealed linking Firtash to an involvement in specific criminal activities.”
The court pointed out that not only was insufficient information provided, but the details supplied were not “sufficiently specific.”
The Austrian judiciary had said in August they had repeatedly requested additional information from the relevant Barcelona court, but without success.
Tuesday’s judicial decision definitively closed Spain’s extradition request.
Firtash’s arrest has been sought by Spain since 2006 on suspicion of having set up a criminal organization and for allegedly paying-out multimillion bribes to Indian civil servants in order to secure a titanium mine exploitation lease in that country.
The Austrian justice ministry is also considering a United States extradition request.
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