At the request of the United States, a Russian businessman with excellent connections is in extradition detention in the Kremlin in Switzerland. Wladislaw Kljuschin was arrested in the canton of Valais on March 21st by order of the Swiss Federal Office of Justice, confirmed a spokeswoman for the office at the request of the FAZ. There Klyushin is accused of having carried out insider trading in the tens of millions with several accomplices. On April 19, the American embassy in Bern formally requested Klyushin's extradition and the Russian is now in custody. The Americans relied on the bilateral extradition treaty between Switzerland and the United States.According to the spokeswoman, the accused is resisting extradition.

Before Biden and Putin met

Johannes Ritter

Correspondent for politics and business in Switzerland.

  • Follow I follow

    Friedrich Schmidt

    Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

    • Follow I follow

      Ahead of the meeting of Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva next Wednesday, Switzerland could become the scene of a battle between the United States and Russia.

      Klyushin's company M13 has developed a media monitoring system called Katyusha (after the multiple rocket launcher known as the “Stalin Organ”) used by the Russian Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Defense.

      In 2018, the Russian investigative medium Projekt connected Klyushin with Alexei Gromov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration.

      This is responsible for media control.

      At the time, Projekt reported how the Kremlin was initially worried by the anonymously managed channels in the Telegram messenger service, but then began to use them for the purposes of the Russian rulers, for example to discredit the oppositionist Alexei Navalnyj. The journalists found out how certain information can be disseminated on appropriate Telegram channels for a fee, whereby certain topics critical of the government are taboo. Projekt assumed that Klyushin ran the particularly popular Nesygar channel for Gromov, which now has more than 335,000 subscribers. Kljuschin sued against the publication, lost in the first instance, but after another court decision, Projekt had to blacken some passages of the disclosure. The Russian service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty now reported,meanwhile the leadership of Njesygar has changed again.

      Moscow must be very keen to prevent Klyushin's extradition to the United States. Because the businessman is a connoisseur of Russian disinformation campaigns. The Federal Office of Justice in Bern is the first instance to decide on the extradition of persecuted persons abroad. A complaint against this can be lodged with the Federal Criminal Court. In particularly important cases, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne can also be involved as the last instance.