PARIS (AP) — A top French court refused to hand over a Kazakh banker-turned-dissident to Russia despite accusations he embezzled millions, saying it considered the extradition request from Moscow to be “politically motivated.”
Requests for the return of criminal suspects can be rejected if they are judged to be politically motivated.
A former energy minister who founded an opposition party in Kazakhstan, he was charged by Kazakh authorities with stealing billions of tenge from a bank he founded, BTA.
The French government signed an extradition decree in September 2015, but Ablyazov appealed to the Council of State, France’s highest administrative body.
Ablyazov’s lawyers argued …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
