Vladimir Antonov landed in Vilnius under guard on Friday. Until December 2025, the Russian banker had been living quietly in Baden, a village in Brittany, on forged papers identifying him as a Ukrainian citizen seeking refugee status, according to The Moscow Times. He now begins a 10.5-year sentence for the €478 million ($556 million) Snoras fraud.
The asylum system built for victims of Russia’s war on Ukraine sheltered a convicted Russian banker.
The asylum system built for victims of Russia’s war on Ukraine sheltered a Russian banker convicted of looting an EU member state. For ten months, France did not notice.
From bank owner to fugitive
Until 2011, Antonov was the principal shareholder of Snoras, Lithuania’s fourth-largest bank, as Le Figaro detailed. He had bid to buy Saab. He briefly owned the English football club Portsmouth. His fortune was estimated at $380 million in 2011.
Lithuanian regulators nationalized Snoras that November, and prosecutors charged Antonov with embezzlement, fraudulent bankruptcy, document forgery, and money laundering. The damages cited in the European arrest warrant: €478 million ($556 million).
Municipalities, schools, and hospitals lost their funds when the bank went under.
London police arrested him in 2011 under the original Lithuanian warrant. A court released him on bail. He fled to Moscow. A Lithuanian court convicted him in absentia in November 2024.
Latvia has its own case. A Riga court sentenced him to six years in 2021 over the collapse of Latvijas Krājbanka, a Snoras subsidiary. Municipalities, schools, and hospitals lost their funds when the bank went under.
The Latvian composer Raimonds Pauls was also among the victims, losing close to €1 million ($1.16 million) of his savings.
The disappearance from Rublyovka
Russia had a case against him, too. A Moscow court sentenced Antonov to 2.5 years for embezzling 150 million rubles (about $1.7 million) from another bank, Sovetsky, The Moscow Times reported. He cooperated with investigators at first.
His father later petitioned a Lithuanian court to declare him legally deceased—a maneuver that would have closed the bank-fraud case.
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For most of 2023, Antonov’s father was telling Russian police his son had probably been murdered. Antonov had vanished from the family residence on Rublyovka, Moscow’s stretch of dachas for the very rich. His father later petitioned a Lithuanian court to declare him legally deceased—a maneuver that would have closed the bank-fraud case. The court refused.
Two years later, French police knocked on a door in Baden, where Antonov had been living for ten months, Brittany’s Le Télégramme reported.
From Brittany to Vilnius in five months
French authorities arrested Antonov in December 2025 under a European arrest warrant. In April 2026, a court in Rennes ordered his extradition over his lawyer’s objection that he would be unsafe in Lithuania. On Friday, he was flown to Vilnius. He was incarcerated on arrival.
How a Russian oligarch convicted of stripping a Lithuanian bank obtained French documents identifying him as a Ukrainian war refugee remains unanswered.
