Vinnik’s lawyer signals possible guilty plea by his client

The Russian Alexander Vinnik, accused of laundering at least $4 billion through the BTC-e Bitcoin exchange, may plead guilty if there is a strong evidentiary basis against him. According to «Известиям», his lawyer Arkady Bukh said.

“If the materials show that things are really bad and the chance of winning is low, then we will talk about a guilty plea. If we feel, based on the evidentiary base, that it is weak, we will go to a jury trial,” he explained.

The lawyer will request that the February hearings be postponed, as he will not have time to study hundreds of thousands of pages of the case materials. According to Bukh, not all the necessary data has yet been transmitted to the defence.

Alexander Vinnik was detained in Greece in the summer of 2017. In 2020 he was extradited to France, where he was later sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of €100,000 in the money-laundering case. The charges of extortion and the creation of the Locky malware were dropped.

Earlier, in August 2022, Vinnik was extradited to the United States, where he faces up to 55 years in prison. The court refused to release him on bail.