Russian citizen in the US faces up to 20 years in prison

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed outrage at the “hastily organized” extradition of Russian citizen Maxim Chukharev, extradited by the Costa Rican authorities at the request of the United States. The programmer is accused of complicity in financial fraud and money laundering. Moscow insists that international rules were grossly violated during the extradition, and the Russian Embassy was not notified of the extradition of Mr. Chukharev.

The Russian Foreign Ministry considers the extradition of Maxim Chukharev (right) illegal
Photo: Photo from the Chukharev family archive/The Tico Times

27-year-old Maxim Chukharev was arrested in Costa Rica in May last year. According to the prosecutor's office for the Southern District of New York, the Russian was a "key employee" of one of the world's largest payment systems, Liberty Reserve, which in the United States is officially called the "main bank of the criminal world." The investigation claims that the company’s services were actively used by hackers, drug dealers and child pornography sellers. In recent years, fraudsters have carried out at least 55 million financial transactions around the world, and investigators estimate the damage they caused at $6 billion.

The investigation, which lasted more than five years, involved agents from the US Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Department of Homeland Security, as well as law enforcement agencies from 17 countries, including Russia, the UK, Canada and China. Arrests were made in the United States, Spain and Costa Rica. In addition to Mr. Chukharev, the head of the company, Artur Budovsky, also known as Arthur Belanchuk and Eric Paltz, financial manager Azzedine el-Amin, former co-owner of Liberty Vladimir Katz and programmer Mark Marmilev were also detained. Two more suspects - Ahmed Yassin Abdelghani and Allan Esteban Hidalgo Jimenez - are still wanted. In addition, five websites were closed, including the Liberty Reserve Internet portal, and 45 US bank accounts belonging to the owners of the payment system were arrested. They held $25 million.

According to investigators, the authors of the fraudulent scheme are immigrants from Ukraine Artur Budovsky and Vladimir Kats. In 2006, the partners registered the company Liberty Reserve SA in Costa Rica. In an advertisement posted on one of the sites, the businessmen stated that they provide services “for instantly conducting any financial transactions for any clients anywhere in the world.”

Clients of Budovsky and Katz sent each other not the currencies of different countries, but electronic banknotes, called LR. They could be purchased from numerous “online exchanges,” most of which were owned by business partners. For this purpose, banks were used in Russia, Nigeria, Latvia, Vietnam and other countries. Thus, the blacklists of American law enforcement agencies include an account opened in Sovetsky Bank CJSC by the Olymp-47 company, as well as several accounts in the Latvian Rietumu Banka.

For the transfer, the partners took only 1% of the transferred amount, but the rates of the “exchangers” were much higher. Services for receiving electronic currency and withdrawing money from an account were estimated by Budovsky and Katz at 5% of the amount. All transactions were anonymous, and most clients of the payment system used fictitious names. The investigation materials mention transfers made by Russian Hackers and accounts opened by a client named Porno Mama. The investigation claims that among the users of the payment system were child pornography dealers, computer scammers and drug dealers.

Following their arrest, all defendants in the case were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, financial fraud, and operating a money transmitting business without an appropriate license. According to US law, they face up to 20 years in prison with confiscation of property.

The detention of Maxim Chukharev caused an immediate reaction from Moscow. The Foreign Ministry lodged an official protest with Costa Rica's Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Mario Fernandez Silva, accusing the country's authorities of "complicity in legal chaos" organized by the United States.

Despite this, in October last year, a Costa Rican court granted the US request, deciding to extradite the Russian. Mr. Chukharev's defense appealed this decision. Despite the protests of his lawyers, the accused was escorted onto a United Airlines plane last Thursday. On the same day, he was placed in a cell at the New York MDD detention center.

The programmer's parents learned about their son's extradition by pure chance. “His cellmate called us and said that Max was being taken away,” said the mother of the accused.

The Russian Ambassador to Costa Rica, Alexander Dogadin, tried to board the plane, but the crew commander forbade him to communicate with Mr. Chukharev. “When making the decision to extradite, local authorities completely ignored our requests and did not inform the embassy about this,” he said, adding that he plans to file an official protest.

The Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights, Konstantin Dolgov, also stated that the Costa Rican government grossly violated international standards. “We learned with indignation about the hastily organized and carried out extradition of citizen of the Russian Federation Maxim Chukharev by the Costa Rican authorities,” says an official comment posted on the Foreign Ministry website.

Mr. Dolgov recalled that Moscow has repeatedly called on Costa Rica “not to take part in the legal chaos” that the American authorities are causing, and threatened that such actions could “seriously complicate” relations between Russia and the United States.

According to The Tico Times, a week before his extradition, Maxim Chukharev was going to make a statement about “the constant violation of his rights by the Costa Rican authorities.” At the end of March, the Russian demonstratively sewed up his mouth using dental floss, and then made several cuts on his stomach with a razor. After examining the prisoner, prison doctors declared the wounds not life-threatening. Maxim Chukharev refused hospitalization.

Kirill Belyaninov, New York

Having your mouth sewn shut doesn't save you from extradition