Rennes (France) (AFP) – A French court has ruled to extradite Russian banker Vladimir Antonov, a former owner of English football club Portsmouth, to Lithuania, his lawyer said on Friday. Antonov was detained in western France last December on suspicion of fraud, following a European arrest warrant from Lithuania. He is accused of having stripped assets and funds from a leading Lithuanian bank, Snoras, where he was a majority shareholder, between 2008 and 2011, when the lender was nationalised.
A second arrest warrant issued in December 2025 added charges of corruption, money laundering, and bankruptcy, with total losses amounting to at least 478 million euros ($551 million). Antonov’s lawyer said that his client would challenge the ruling. The court “clearly did not take into account the real risk to Mr. Antonov’s life in Eastern Europe,” Henry Ermeneux told AFP.
In 2024, a Lithuanian court sentenced Antonov in absentia to 10.5 years in prison for embezzlement. In 2011, Antonov was arrested in Britain on the strength of a Lithuanian arrest warrant issued over the collapse of the Snoras Bank, but later released. He purchased Portsmouth, then in the second-tier Championship, in June 2011. He stepped down the following November when his company, Convers Sports Initiatives, went into administration following his arrest over the fraud allegations.
In 2015, a lawyer said Antonov had fled Britain because he feared for his life.
© 2024 AFP
