Swiss extradite Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin to the US

© Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Klyushin, who is accused by the United States of commercial espionage, was handed over to the American police on Saturday and put on a flight to the US from Zurich.

The news of his extradition was confirmed by the Swiss Federal Office of Justice on Saturday evening. The Russian national is accused of hacking into American companies and, with the aid of several accomplices, stealing commercially sensitive information for profits in the range of tens of millions of dollars. His appeals against the extradition were dismissed by Swiss courts.

Klyushin has been at the centre of an extradition tussle between the US and Russia since he was arrested in Switzerland in March. He was detained en route to a ski holiday in Zermatt with his family. A month later the US embassy in Bern formally requested his extradition on the basis of the bilateral extradition treaty between Switzerland and the US.

The Russian businessman is, among other things, the owner of the M13 group, which specialises in databases and IT resources. According to him, the American grievances are political in nature and the extradition procedure for insider trading was a pretext to hand him over to US authorities.