Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 8, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
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France has released Daniil Kasatkin, a Russian accused by the US of cyberhacking, allowing him to return to Moscow amid international legal discussions.
MOSCOW, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A Russian basketball player who was arrested in France last year and threatened with extradition to the United States has been released and flown back to Moscow, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Daniil Kasatkin was detained at a Paris airport on June 21 at the request of the U.S., which suspected him of being part of a hacking network using ransomware against U.S. companies and federal institutions. He denied the accusation.
Russian state news agency RIA quoted his lawyer, Frederic Belot, as saying Kasatkin had been released late on Wednesday and was already back in Moscow. Belot has previously said that Kasatkin had no computer expertise and that his device had been hacked by cybercriminals.
Kasatkin's release came two weeks after the Kremlin said Russia was in contact with France over the case of Laurent Vinatier, a French researcher who was sentenced in 2024 to three years in a Russian prison for violating the country's "foreign agent" laws.
A French journalist raised Vinatier's case with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference last month, and Putin said he would look into it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said that Moscow had made an unspecified "offer" to Paris, and the ball was in France's court.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)
Cybersecurity refers to the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks, which can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Financial crime encompasses a range of illegal activities that involve money, such as fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement, often targeting financial institutions.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts a victim's files, demanding a ransom payment to restore access to the data.
Extradition is the legal process by which one jurisdiction surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another jurisdiction for prosecution or punishment.
A hacking network is a group of individuals or entities that collaborate to conduct unauthorized access to computer systems, often for malicious purposes.
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