Prague, Nov 23 (CTK) – After the United States, Russia has officially asked the Czech Republic for the extradition of Russian Yevgeni Nikulin, who was detained in Prague in October on suspicion of computer hacking, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Tereza Schejbalova told CTK yesterday.
The ministry will assess the formalities of both requests and then send them to the Prague Municipal State Attorney’s Office, she added.
The United States seeks Nikulin’s extradition since it suspects him of having attacked the Linkedin social network and the servers of the Dropbox and Formspring companies.
The Californian federal court previously charged Nikulin of a hacker’s attack, theft and conspiracy.
Russia demands that Nikulin be extradited to his homeland where he is accused of another crime or an Internet theft of around 88,000 crowns in 2009, Schejbalova said .
The decision whether Nikulin will be extradited to the United States is up to the Prague Municipal Court after the state attorney’s office proposes extradition proceedings.
If the court meets the application for extradition, the final say will be up to Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, who can decide regardless of the court verdict.
According to the U.S. investigators, Nikulin used the Internet to hack computers of the Linkedin professional network on March 3-4, 2012 and he gained passwords of their users with the aim to either sell the stolen data or use them for an unauthorised access to further computers and accounts.
The U.S. Embassy asked for Nikulin’s extradition in a note submitted to the Czech Foreign Ministry on November 16. The Foreign Ministry sent the U.S. request to the Justice Ministry on Tuesday.
But on the same day, the Justice Ministry received an extradition request from the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, issued on November 16 as well.
“The extradition is sought for a crime committed in Moscow on April 2, 2009, in particular a theft of finances amounting $3,450 from the damaged T.A.P. through the Webmoney electronic payment system,” the ministry said.
A district court in Moscow issued a warrant for Nikulin’s arrest on November 10, it added.
The Czech police in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detained Nikulin in a Prague hotel. He was in the Czech Republic with his girl-friend. He collapsed after the arrest and was hospitalised. He is in custody now.
His defence lawyer Adam Kopecky said he had no information about the Russian extradition request.
“If there are more requests for the extradition of the same person, we will assess the conditions of the extradition admissibility in each of the requests individually,” court spokeswoman Marketa Puci told CTK.
She admitted that it might happen that the extradition to both countries would be admissible according to the court’s verdict. “Then it is up to the justice minister to decide where this person will be extradited,” she added.
Under the law, the justice minister should in his decision-making consider primarily the order in which the requests were delivered and the circumstances of the crimes committed, including how serious they are. The minister would also assess whether other countries can reach the extradition of the suspect from the country to which the Czech Republic extradites him.
The Russian embassy in Prague previously called the U.S. step a part “of a hunt for Russian citizens all over the world and the forcing of U.S. jurisdiction upon foreign countries.”
Moscow said it would do its utmost to prevent the extradition of Nikulin to the United States.
In the past, Russia sharply protested against the extradition of Russian citizens to the U.S. judiciary, such as arms dealer Viktor But and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko. He was convicted of drug smuggling in the United States. But was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in the U.S. in 2012.
($1=25.474 crowns)
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