Portsmouth FC's former owner loses fight against extradition

Vladimir Antonov, the former owner of Portsmouth football club, has failed in a High Court appeal against his extradition to Lithuania to face allegations of bank fraud.

The Lithuanian authorities have accused Mr Antonov, a Russian national and former chairman of Snoras bank, and his associate, Raimondas Baranauskas, of improperly transferring more than €478m and another $10m into accounts said to be under their control.

The two deny any wrongdoing and say they have been made scapegoats for the "hugely controversial" nationalisation of Snoras in 2011. They have said the charges are politically motivated, partly because Mr Antonov is a Russian national.

Snoras, which had expanded into the Czech Republic, Latvia and Belgium, was considered Lithuania's fifth-largest bank with assets of €2.2bn in March 2011, before it was nationalised in November of that year.

The two men had been seeking to overturn an earlier decision of district Judge John Zani at Westminster magistrates' court, who ruled in January 2014 that the pair could be extradited to Lithuania.

In their High Court appeal this year, John Jones QC, counsel for Mr Baranauskas, claimed the "president and central bank brought down Snoras for political reasons".

The prosecutor-general's office then issued a European Arrest Warrant for the two men in "undue haste" after receiving a complaint from the central bank, he alleged.

"If the government decided for political reasons to destroy the bank and used the central bank to achieve that aim, it became necessary for the figureheads of the bank to be scapegoated by being the subject of criminal charges," Mr Jones told the hearing.

Mr Jones said the prosecutor-general's office issued an arrest warrant "very shortly" after receiving the complaint and "there was no possible way they could have concluded any independent investigation".

The prosecutor-general's office may have been influenced by political pressure, he added.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Mr Antonov, said if his client were to be extradited he would not obtain a fair trial because of his nationality and political opinions. Mr Antonov could be held in police detention upon his arrival in Lithuania, breaching his human rights, he submitted.

The Lithuanian authorities have alleged that the two men created false accounts and other documents within the bank's records and that in July 2011 Mr Antonov arranged for false information to be provided to the Bank of Lithuania.

The men, who were both shareholders in the bank, deny all allegations of criminal conduct, which cover a period between 2008 and 2011.

Mr Antonov bought Portsmouth FC in June 2011 but was forced to stand down as chairman in November that year when his Convers Sports Initiatives company went into administration.

On Wednesday the High Court rejected the grounds of the men's extradition appeal.

Lord Justice Aikens, one of the two judges, ruled against claims that the prosecutions were politically motivated, calling such arguments "wholly without merit.

"A vague argument that there was a political decision to prosecute in order to justify a nationalisation which was itself ordered on political grounds is not enough to establish the necessary causal link," he ruled.

The judge added that even if it could be demonstrated that the motive for nationalisating Snoras was related to an "anti-Russian ownership campaign" by the Lithuanian government, "that would not provide the necessary causal link between the decision to issue the EAW [European Arrest Warrant] to prosecute VA [Vladimir Antonov] and his Russian nationality."

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