An Austrian court denied the extradition of Dmitry Firtash to the United States.

This is reported by Vienna AT.

The court made this decision on November 7, but announced it on December 4. The Vienna Prosecutor's Office plans to appeal this decision by December 16.

American law enforcement suspects Firtash of conspiring to bribe officials in India for the extraction of titanium used in jet engines. The oligarch himself denies any wrongdoing. In the U.S., he faces over 80 years in prison with asset forfeiture.

What led up to this?

Firtash was arrested in Austria in 2014 and later released on bail of 125 million euros, marking the beginning of a legal saga that continues to this day.

Initially, the Vienna court ruled against extradition on the grounds that the charges were allegedly politically motivated.

However, in February 2017, the higher court deemed this argument "insufficiently substantiated" and ruled that Firtash could be extradited to the U.S. In 2019, the Austrian Supreme Court upheld this ruling.

The then Minister of Justice of Austria approved the extradition, but a Vienna court judge stated that it could only occur after the case was reopened.

In March 2022, the Vienna court decided against reopening the case. However, the higher court decided to allow the extradition procedure to resume, overturning the 2017 ruling.

In June 2019, a federal judge in Chicago dismissed a motion to dismiss the charges against Firtash, which claimed that the U.S. lacked jurisdiction over crimes committed in India.

In Ukraine, the National Security and Defense Council imposed sanctions against Firtash in June 2018 for his involvement in the titanium business and supplying raw materials to Russia, which were used in military enterprises there. However, the oligarch disagrees with the accusations.

In March 2023, the Security Service and the Bureau of Economic Security reported searches in the offices of 16 regional gas companies across the country. According to the investigation, the top management of these 16 regional gas enterprises is implicated in a large-scale scheme to embezzle significant volumes of gas.

These companies are linked to the sanctioned Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, noted the SBU.