An important statement for us. Please read it and help spread it.
Those who follow the work of the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) will of course know Nikita Kulachenkov from the investigations department. He wrote explainers on sanctions, worked on Chaika, and the lion’s share of the work on pursuing the Chaika family’s mafia network in Switzerland and Latvia has been his. This is generally his area of specialization with us.
You probably also know that, in recognition of his excellent work at ACF, Nikita was persecuted by the Investigative Committee and put on a wanted list in connection with that same case about stealing a piece of cardboard from a fence.
Most people think everyone laughed this case off long ago and that it was closed when Alburov was amnestied. That is not the case: Kulachenkov is still on the federal wanted list over it.
Because of this persecution, Nikita was forced to leave the country and was granted political asylum in Lithuania. He was issued a refugee passport and other EU documents so that he could live and work normally within the European Union.
In January, using his travel document (essentially a refugee international passport), he traveled to Cyprus on business.
He was detained in Larnaca on the afternoon of January 24 at the request of the Russian Federation. He was taken to a police station. A couple of hours later, a local lawyer was found. That same day, Interpol in Vilnius sent confirmation to Interpol in Larnaca: yes, they said, he is our refugee, with document number such-and-such. The police were also given a copy of the Lithuanian asylum decision, which clearly refers to political grounds. Nevertheless, he was made to spend the night at the station. Over the next two days, there were two court hearings in Larnaca—at one, the judge examined the Interpol request and laughed at the fact that Russia was seeking extradition over the theft of something worth 58 euros, and at the other they set bail at 20,000 euros, scheduled the extradition hearing for February 12, and sent Nikita to prison, which, to put it mildly, appears to be a violation of international norms.
Cyprus has a mixed extradition procedure: first, Cyprus’s Minister of Justice and Public Order, Ionas Nicolaou (here are his Twitter and Facebook, and the office phone number is +357 22805950), must authorize or refuse to authorize the extradition procedure. Then, if the procedure is authorized, the case goes to court, which requests documents from the parties and issues a ruling. In Nikita’s case, everything is perfectly clear:
Under the law, he has non-refoulement status. This applies across all EU countries, regardless of which EU country granted the person political asylum. This status is established in the Geneva Convention and the 2004 European agreement (Article 21). In other words, a person who has been granted political asylum in one EU country cannot be extradited to a third country either from the country that granted asylum or from any other EU country.
2) On top of that, Lithuania’s Migration Department confirmed Nikita’s status in a written reply, which was immediately forwarded to the Cypriot Ministry of Justice.
From the very beginning, Cyprus had more than enough grounds to release him immediately and apologize.
Nevertheless, that was not done.
After 2–3 days, once all the details had been clarified and additional documents had been received from the lawyer and the Lithuanian side regarding the political grounds for asylum, the minister certainly had no reason to delay his release any further.
The minister should inform the attorney general that he is not authorizing the extradition; the attorney general should then notify the court and the prison, and that’s it—the case is closed and the person is released. By law, the minister has the authority to free a person in such a situation at any time, even on weekends.
But Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou dragged out the decision that extraditing Nikita would be unlawful for almost three weeks. Nikita’s lawyer, representatives of Lithuania, and the UN-affiliated International Association for Refugees have raised this issue with him repeatedly, yet Nikita remains in Nicosia prison. The lawyer keeps hearing the same response from the ministry: “you need to wait a couple more days.” This game is drawing Cyprus into violating European and international law for the sake of its close ties with Russia.
Naturally, we have been in touch with Nikita from day one, helped raise money for his bail, and have been doing what we can. But we did not publicize this story because local lawyers and officials strongly advised us not to. The idea was that everything would be resolved quickly and quietly.
And now, for the third week, a person protected from persecution by asylum has been sitting in jail in violation of European refugee agreements. So much for “quickly.”
That is why today we are forced to appeal to the Russian and European media and to the public. Cyprus is supposedly part of the EU, but it very much looks as though they are carrying out some kind of informal instructions from Moscow by unlawfully detaining an ACF employee. We fear they may “accidentally” hand him over and then say: oh, did he really have a European refugee passport?
We demand that the Cypriot authorities comply with EU law and immediately release Nikita Kulachenkov.
P.S. About an hour ago, the lawyer reported that the Ministry of Justice had supposedly sent some instructions to the Attorney General’s Office not to extradite Nikita. Nevertheless, he remains in prison, and there is still no confirmation whatsoever of his release.
P.P.S.
Fun facts about the Cypriot prison from Nikita: *In the Cypriot prison (just like in Russian prisons), colored pencils are forbidden, but they do give out unlimited oranges. *When Nikita arrived in prison, the other inmates quickly concluded: “Russian means he’s here for money laundering.” After he explained what the case was about, they started to think he was involved in contemporary art.
All in all, his letters are upbeat, and he sends his regards to everyone.