Collapsed Bitcoin Exchange ‘Expert’ Might Hold the Keys to Russia’s U.S. Election Meddling

Russian citizen Alexander who is being held in a jail in Greece could shed light on the ongoing investigation over Russia's interference with the U.S. politics. According to a report in Bloomberg, Vinnik, 38, may be aware of how Russians in U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's crosshairs used Bitcoin to obscure their money trail. Vinnik was detained in July 2017 in Greece after U.S. prosecutors in San Francisco accused him of supervising BTC-e, a now defunct cryptocurrency exchange that allegedly helped criminals launder over $9 billion. BTC-e, according to cryptocurrency analysis firm Elliptic, handled some Bitcoins traced to Fancy Bear, a hacking unit of Russian military intelligence officers who Mueller separately accuses of stealing and releasing Democrats' emails to sway votes in the 2016 elections. Fight for Extradition The U.S. has been trying to get its hands on Vinnik for more than a year. Greece's Supreme Court ruled in December that he could be extradited to the U.S. to