As the readers who are interested in contemporary Ukrainian politics perfectly know, the Austrian police
arrested a Ukrainian oligarch
Dmytro Firtash who was and possibly still is a backer of former Ukrainian president
Viktor Yanukovych. At the moment,
Firtash, who was arrested on 12 March on the basis of a US arrest warrant, remains in custody. Austrian authorities set bail for
Firtash, at 125 million euros. The payment was transferred on 18 March, but the bank handling the account reported the funds to federal money-laundering investigators, who would check where the money came from. For this reason,
Firtash has not been released from custody. The US government is asking Austria to extradite
Firtash to the US.
Since the organised economic crime is not the focus of this blog, my interest in the
Firtash case is his lawyer, rather than the oligarch himself.* His lawyer's name is
Dieter Böhmdorfer (1943) and he is former Minister of Justice of Austria (29.02.2000 - 25.06.2004).
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Dieter Böhmdorfer
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