A banker who presided over the collapse of an historic Latvian bank and fled to Russia appears finally to be within the reach of justice, the LETA newswire reports.

In accordance with a European arrest warrant issued by the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office, the former co-owner of the liquidated Lithuanian bank Snoras, the former parent bank of the also-liquidated Latvijas Krājbanka (Latvian savings bank), Vladimir Antonov, has been detained in France, the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Thursday.

In November last year, the Vilnius Regional Court sentenced Antonov and former Snoras General Director Raimonds Baranauskas in absentia to 10.5 years in prison for large-scale embezzlement.

Legal proceedings have been initiated to extradite Russian citizen Antonov to Lithuania, Lithuanian Prosecutor General Nida Grunskiene told reporters. The Prosecutor General added that she has no information about the current whereabouts of Lithuanian citizen Baranauskas, who was sentenced alongside Antonov.

Antonov was arrested in the Brittany region of France. The Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office issued a European arrest warrant for him on December 9.

Lawyers for Antonov and Baranauskas have appealed the verdict. The appeal is expected to be heard by the Lithuanian Court of Appeal next year. The Prosecutor General’s Office transferred the criminal case to court in 2019 after a seven-year pre-trial investigation.

The Lithuanian court found that the duo misappropriated property worth approximately 509 million euros, caused losses of approximately 460 million euros to the Snoras bank and its creditors, and also misappropriated another 14.5 million euros.

In 2015, a British court decided to extradite Antonov and Baranauskas to Lithuania, as both were living in London at the time, but they fled to Russia, where they were granted asylum.
Lithuanian prosecutors, preparing to try Antonov and Baranauskas in absentia, informed the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office of the charges against them in March 2018, but Russia unsurprisingly refused to extradite them. Somewhat ironically, Antonov was also convicted in Russia for defrauding a bank in 2019.

The Lithuanian government nationalized Snoras and suspended the bank’s operations in November 2011, citing concerns about its financial condition. The bank was later declared bankrupt. Latvijas Krājbanka also soon after found itself short of around 100 million lats (140 million euros), and in December 2011 the Riga Regional Court declared the bank insolvent.

For more on the background to Antonov”s dubious activities, Re:Baltica has this in the archives.

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