BTC-e, suspected of laundering at least $4 billion, may consider pleading guilty

Odaily Planet Daily News BTC-e co-creator Alexander Vinnik was accused of laundering at least US$4 billion through BTC-e. His lawyer Arkady Bukh revealed that if the evidence against Vinnik is solid, he may plead guilty. Arkady Bukh said: "If the material shows that everything is bad and the probability of success is low, then we will talk about a plea. If we think the evidence is weak, we will have a jury trial." The lawyer will ask for a court hearing scheduled for February next year to be postponed because he does not have enough time to study "hundreds of thousands of pages" of case materials. Alexander Vinnik was detained in Greece in the summer of 2017 and extradited to France in 2020, where he was later sentenced to five years in prison and fined 100,000 euros in a money laundering case. In August 2022, Vinnik was extradited to the United States. If convicted, he may face 55 years in prison in the United States. The court previously rejected his bail application. (Forklog)