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Britain issues arrest warrants for former Snoras owners Antonov and Baranauskas

BC, Vilnius, 07.07.2015.Print version
Great Britain has issued arrest warrants for former bank Snoras owners Vladimir Antonov and Raimondas Baranauskas who went missing after losing their fight against extradition to face fraud charges in Lithuania, LETA/BLOOMBERG reports.

Antonov and Baranauskas both had their bail revoked by a London judge on Monday after Antonov's lawyers said he has fled to Russia, breaching his bail conditions.

 

Lithuania has spent over three years trying to extradite Antonov, a Russian citizen, and his Lithuanian business partner Baranauskas. The pair lost an appeal to block their extradition to Lithuania, where they are accused of forging documents and fixing accounts to siphon more than EUR 490 million from what was then the country's third-biggest bank by deposits, causing its collapse.

 

The 2011 collapse of Snoras and its Latvian subsidiary, Krajbanka, rocked the two Baltic nations, prompting about USD 2 billion of deposit-insurance payouts and a run on savings in Latvia.

 

The State of Lithuania nationalized Snoras on November 16, 2011, having concerns on the bank's assets. The bank was declared bankrupt on November 24 the same year. Baranauskas, Snoras CEO, and Antonov, chairman of Snoras council, owned 25.31 percent 68.1 percent of the bank's shares respectively.






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