{"id":23965,"date":"2026-05-25T20:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T20:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/23965\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T20:51:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T20:51:49","slug":"france-hands-over-russian-tycoon-to-lithuania-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/23965\/","title":{"rendered":"France Hands Over Russian Tycoon to Lithuania"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>French authorities have handed over the former owner of Lithuania&#8217;s Snoras bank to the authorities in Vilnius, the country&#8217;s prosecutor&#8217;s office said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Russian tycoon Vladimir Antonov, a former owner of English football club Portsmouth, was arrested in the Morbihan area of western France under a European arrest warrant in December last year.<\/p>\n<p>He was transferred from custody in France to Lithuania. A French court ruled early last month that he could be extradited.<\/p>\n<p>Anatonov was convicted by a court in Lithuania in 2024 and sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for embezzlement, squandering of funds, fraudulent bankruptcy, handling illegally acquired property, fraudulent accounting and document forgery.<\/p>\n<p>\t\tnews<br \/>\n\t\t<a data-id=\"in-article-block\" class=\"related-article__inner\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themoscowtimes.com\/2026\/05\/25\/russias-bank-clean-up-got-hijacked-and-landed\" title=\"How Russia&#039;s Bank Clean-Up Got Hijacked and Landed a Senator in Jail\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tHow Russia&#8217;s Bank Clean-Up Got Hijacked and Landed a Senator in Jail<br \/>\n\t\t\tRead more<br \/>\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another Snoras executive was also convicted in the case.<\/p>\n<p>The offenses date back to the period 2008 to 2011, when the Russian controlled Snoras, which at the time was Lithuania&#8217;s fourth-largest bank.<\/p>\n<p>According to the arrest warrant, losses were estimated to be at least 478 million euros ($557 million).<\/p>\n<p>Antonov was held under an initial arrest warrant in 2011 in Britain, then released.<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, when Russia was hit by one of its worst financial crises, Antonov, then aged 23, bought a small bank with his father.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 2000s, he went on to take control of a series of banking institutions in Russia and abroad, including Snoras and Latvia&#8217;s Latvijas Krajbanka.<\/p>\n<p>His wealth was estimated at $380 million in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>A Message from The Moscow Times:<\/p>\n<p>Dear readers,<\/p>\n<p>We are facing unprecedented challenges. 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For details on the personal data we collect and how it is used, please see our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themoscowtimes.com\/page\/privacy-policy\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"privacy policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French authorities have handed over the former owner of Lithuania&#8217;s Snoras bank to the authorities in Vilnius, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[108,17588,5,17225],"class_list":["post-23965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-banks","tag-billionaires","tag-france","tag-lithuania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}